JUNGIAN TYPOLOGY POST #14: WHAT I'VE LEARNED ABOUT DIFFERENTIATION PATTERNS
There are 2 factors involved in typing a person in SOJT. The first, and most important is cognition, and that's why all my Jungian Typology (SOJT) articles prior to this one (except for help in reading Psychological Types Chapter 11) have all been about Chapter 10, where Jung talks about cognition. Chapter 11 is where he talks about differentiation, which is the main contributing factor in why people with the same cognition can be so different.
From those Chapter 11 reading helps, I was able to determine that there are 4 phases to differentiation. We're born in Phase 1, which is where everything is undifferentiated. All of us go through phase 2, and enter phase 3 in our adolescence. In Phase 2 just one function or attitude starts to become more noticeable, and in Phase 3, usually by then, only our attitude or auxiliary is still undifferentiated. Most of us stay in Phase 3 until we die, but some of us move on to Phase 4, which is full differentiation (each function has a clear order and a clear attitude) sometime in our adult years. I know I entered Phase 4, myself, sometime between the ages of 35 and 40. I spent nearly 20 years in Phalse 3!😱 Well, enough of me, let's move on.
Here are some common differentiation patterns you'll see in adults
1. Full differentiation
For this example, I used C S Joseph, who I will soon be doing a Typing In Practice post on. Fully differentiated people are the ones who are extremely easy to type, using life themes. That was how I typed him, and confirmed the typing using DISC:
C S Joseph-ENTJ
2. Short primary/long secondary
For this example, I used Alecia Moore, better known as P!nk. People with Short primary/long secondary are fully differentiated, but to the observer and the tester, their auxiliary function is more noticeable and present than their dominant. Ask them, they'll say their dominant function is their main life theme. It just doesn't look that way in observation or testing
P!nk- ESFP
3. Undifferentiated attitude
Undifferentiated attitude is a common differentiation pattern from Phase 3, that continues, for a lot of people, the rest of their life. It is where the functions have a definite order, but when triggered, they alternate attitudes. For instance, Alicia Keys, who's normally Si Fi, alternates with Se Fe when she gets excited. When she calms down she returns to Si Fi (and her unconscious pole functions follow the trend as well):
Alicia Keys-ISFP
4. Undifferentiated auxiliary
This is another common Phase 3 differentiation pattern that stays with many of us for life. It's where both a person's auxiliaries are conscious, and they alternate between auxiliaries when triggered. For instance, when Marshall Mathers writes rhymes for his raps, his less preferred Ne auxiliary gets triggered, and when he stops writing, it's back to Se again:
Marshall Mathers-ESFJ
Those are all the differentiation patterns I've encountered in adults that I understand. There's one that I've discovered, but I'm not sure exactly what it represents, and what the mechanism is. It's going to be the post immediately after this one.