Psychological Types

Jung once said that the first half of life should be dedicated to forming a healthy ego, and the second half to tearing it apart and going inwards. I think Psycho-Cybernetics is just such a manual for developing a “healthy ego”. And, in terms of its focus on optimism and goal-setting, it corresponds to the extraverted side of life, albeit simultaneously involving the introverted side through its use of imagination and Stoic independence.

In one line of Psycho-Cybernetics, Maltz admits that focusing on the negative once or twice per year is probably a good thing, presumably for keeping oneself humble and aware of one’s Shadow. A friend told me that there is a season for growth, and a season for tilling the soil and reducing everything to dirt. And I think that just such a cycle is the best course for young people. It doesn’t work to be the brooding melancholic all the time, even if there is a kind of wisdom associated with it. Neither is it sustainable to be a ball of sunshine forever. Without acknowledging the wrong things in life, they erode at the structure of the mind like rats or termites eating the timbers.

In terms of Max Luscher’s colour psychology, Psycho-Cybernetics surely corresponds to the Orange-Red side of life, and Jung to the Dark Blue; to the Animus and Anima of the personality respectively; to an elaboration of the Heroic Consciousness and the Deep Unconscious.

In terms of cybernetic theory, Maltz was influenced in part by Alfred Adler, Jung’s contemporary, who pioneered many aspects of the ideas of goal-directedness and success-striving. Jung was also well aware of the teleology of the psyche. He thought it was a forward-facing thing, rather than one dictated primarily by personal history as Freud thought.

             The idea of the self-image or self-concept might be familiar to the reader. It states that you can’t exceed the limitations you place on yourself mentally—that you believe to be true of yourself. According to theorists, the self-image prescribes the “area of the possible”. A narrow view of yourself will limit what you can do in practice, whereas an open view may allow you to excel and discover new things about yourself. What is the self-image exactly? Maltz cites the psychologist Prescott Lecky, who thought of the personality as a system of ideas that must above all else be consistent. The “ego ideal”, or self-image, is the keystone of this system. All beliefs about the world hinge on beliefs about the self. Apart from physical limitations, all limits or possibilities stem from this complex. According to Maltz, this is why plenty of “positive thinking” psychology doesn’t work. These techniques try to change a person’s thinking about their situation or environment, attacking the periphery rather than the center. As such, the changes can’t persist.

             Maltz personally encountered the power of the self-image in his clinical practice as a plastic surgeon. Clients would come to him asking him to fix their disfigurements, which they believed were ruining their lives in one way or another. However, the vast inconsistency in the way that these clients responded to surgery alerted him to the psychological dynamics at play. Some clients would come to him with scars or abnormalities; some with perfectly normal and even handsome features, which they nonetheless saw as robbing them of happiness. The difference after surgery was even more striking. Some clients would seem completely transformed in terms of their personality. Some would stay exactly the same; and some would even insist that Maltz hadn’t touched a single thing with his scalpel. In addition, shame or pride about a physical feature was not universal but depended on the context. A scar across the cheek destroyed an American salesman’s confidence, but was a status symbol in the underground sabre-dueling rings in Germany at the time. This indicated to Maltz that the essential factor wasn’t the reality of a person’s appearance, but their beliefs about their appearance, and what those beliefs meant for their self-image.

             This ties into a larger discussion on the power of belief in psychology. Our modern scientific-materialist ethos might influence us to believe that we naturally think in terms of what is factual and real, but it’s more correct to say that we think and act based on what we believe to be true. Belief is not a late-stage function in behaviour: Though beliefs may be derived from higher cognitive processes like reasoning, they go to form the basis of our perceptual and emotional experience. For example, you might think that the fight-or-flight reflex acts pre-consciously to real things in the environment, regardless of ideas or beliefs. But if a man encounters a bear in the woods so that his blood starts pumping and his muscles jolt into action—but the bear is actually an actor in a bear-suit—then clearly the nervous system is reacting to the idea of a bear rather than a real life-threatening situation.

             The decisive influence of belief over behaviour, including subconscious or automatic behaviour, is also apparent in the twin suggestion-based phenomena of hypnosis and placebo. Under hypnosis, a weightlifter can be made to exceed their normal lifting capacity or struggle to lift a pencil. A person told that they are standing in the arctic may shiver genuinely. There are plenty of weird results to be had by suggesting an idea under the state of hypnosis. However, Maltz argues that there is no fundamental difference between behaviour under hypnosis and normal behaviour. They both simply consist of acting on what is believed to be true about oneself or the environment. In fact, in the process of changing beliefs about yourself—changing the self-image—it might be more correct to say that it’s a matter of de-hypnotizing yourself from false beliefs, provided that the new image is closer to reality. In placebo, which is the most-studied medical phenomenon and the biggest thorn in the side of pharmaceuticals, a sugar pill can have dramatic effects on a person’s somatic or mental health provided they believe they’re taking a functional, novel medicine. Most market drugs barely manage to exceed the effect produced by placebo, if at all.

             The second main idea presented in Psycho-Cybernetics is that of the mind as a cybernetic system. It’s theorized that other animals also operate under the same principle. They have a goal in mind— “get food, get water, copulate”—and positive and negative emotions—gratification and lack—to motivate them and let them know how close they are to the goal. We can surmise that they have this much since the limbic system or “emotional brain” is largely conserved between humans and other mammals. However, Maltz argues that while this animal system is dictated by instinctual goals and basic needs, we have a greater capacity to consciously set new, complex goals. Indeed, the prefrontal cortex, which is enormous in humans compared to other mammals, is the seat of planning and executive decision-making (meaning its activity can influence and override other parts of the nervous system). Cybernetics comes from the Greek word meaning “steersman”, and in this theory the conscious mind is the steersman of the whole organism.

             What significance does this have for the self-help domain? If the nervous system is a cybernetic system, then at least a significant portion of our positive and negative emotion is felt in relation to a goal. Happy feelings indicate we’re moving closer to our imagined destination, and sadness, anxiety, and anger tell us that we are off-course. But how many of us know what are goals are? They tend to be muddled, uncertain, or seemingly non-existent. Even worse, Maltz suggests that most people are oriented towards negative goals—towards failure. According to his take on cybernetic theory, our job as an “ego consciousness” is to submit goals to our automatic systems that then carry it out. This can be illustrated in a task as simple as picking up an object. The amount of muscle fibres and the pattern of contraction is huge and complex, but it is all taken care of subconsciously. We only need to target the object with our will—plan the broad strokes of the movement in our imagination—and the automatic systems take care of the rest. When we worry incessantly and picture our future failings and shortcomings, we are inadvertently orienting our nervous system towards this destination. What we expect to happen, what we believe will happen, will most likely happen: The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy.

             Maltz offers advice on how to handle this system. For one thing, while anxiety has its uses, and was surely essential to our ancestors who had to be cautious in dangerous environments, our over-use of it manifests mostly as inhibition and failure-drive. Instead of being consumed by negative things that might happen, focus on a positive outcome. Orient yourself towards a goal that you believe will make you happy and fulfilled. Much of the fulfillment will come from incremental progress towards it, since according to the cybernetic theory, positive emotions are the positive feedback system—the “You’re on the right course” signal—but you’ll simultaneously be making progress towards a better situation. Of course, “happiness” is not the not the only—or even the recommended—goal. Any undertaking will work in the same way, whether the goal is chosen out of want, responsibility, or necessity. Picturing success and making progress towards it becomes a primary source of contentment and meaning, and picturing success rather than failure will simply make that outcome more likely.

             There is also the question of how to handle the negative feedback system. In a cybernetic system, negative feedback is used to indicate error— “You’re off course”—and once the system corrects the error, it’s over. The errors are not stored in memory. Only the right course is stored so that it can be repeated later. You can observe this in infants learning to move or speak. Random, inarticulate movements are refined into the smooth, automatic movements we spoke of earlier, as the baby gropes around and moves its limbs in a trial-and-error fashion until it figures out the desired pattern. Babbling is also thought to be the expression of all possible phonetic sounds, which are narrowed down to suit what becomes the child’s mother tongue. What this is saying is that a negative experience is to be learnt from, once, and then the associated memory can be forgotten. If a bad memory persists for a long time, it might indicate that it hasn’t been used to “correct the course”. Unfortunately, some experiences can be so painful that it’s easier to push them down whenever they’re recalled. But they may dissipate if they’re taken for what they’re worth: a lesson for the future.

             Another recommendation by Maltz is to use relaxation to your advantage. Armed with the knowledge that conscious-you is linked to a complex automatic mechanism, you can optimize it by simply not messing with it. Maltz cites the great American psychologist William James among others as offering the wisdom that once a goal is set and the die are cast, there is no more use in worrying. Reflecting on your actions as you’re doing them has an inhibiting and distracting effect. Anxiety clogs the gears and confuses the system. Therefore, developing a habit of relaxation, in whatever way suits you, is for the best. This might sound similar to the Taoist principle of Wu Wei, which translates to “not doing”, but more accurately means “not doing with undue effort” or “acting effortlessly”.

             Maltz relates these two ideas, the self-image and the cybernetic Man, by arguing that they are both subject to modification and control by humanity’s most innovative faculty: the creative imagination. Along with our materialistic belief that our accurate perception of reality drives behaviour, we also consider our ideas and beliefs to be derived from reality. The sum of our experiences from childhood to date convince us of who we are now, and we believe that this self-image is accurate. However, from Freud onwards we’ve come to know that the line between memory and fantasy is blurred. Memories are to a large extent something that we create rather than record, and with each recollection a memory changes to suit preoccupations in the present. Though features of our self-image may have their basis in past failures or admonishments from authority figures, our self-image also has a role in how memories are recorded and reproduced. This is how a person who thinks they get nothing but misfortune doesn’t recognize good luck when it comes their way, or how someone who sees themselves as a victim is always the victim of their situation. It’s also similar to the idea of “confirmation bias”, where a person only registers or perceives what they already believe.

             However, Maltz claims that we can use this blurred line between memory and fantasy, between belief and reality, to our advantage. Though nasty habits of belief or an unfortunately poor self-image can be deeply-instantiated and hard to get rid of, it’s possible through the use of imagination. Maltz argues that recollection and imagination are such similar mechanisms that our nervous system can’t tell the difference between something that is experienced and something vividly imagined. In the same way that our beliefs are abstractions from experience, we can change beliefs or create new ones by spending some time imagining ourselves, our environment, or our futures in a new light. Imagining a new self-image will instantiate it in your automatic system over time. This process doesn’t have to be equivalent with “positive delusion”. Maltz notes that most people under-sell themselves by default, and have poorer self-concepts than is realistic. Besides, trying to align value judgements with “reality” is an inherently confused affair. It usually consists of people trying to measure up to an idealized cultural standard. Maltz cites a handful of studies to illustrate the arbitrariness of the inferiority complex, including one where good students performed much worse, and experienced far more stress, when told (wrongly) that the average completion time of an exam they were given was much lower than was actually possible. Therefore, this process of achieving a reasonable self-image through prolonged imagination is what Maltz refers to as “de-hypnotizing yourself from false beliefs”.

             You can also use imagination to adjust your mood at any time. By stopping to imagine a scenario in which you feel content and relaxed, you’ll feel these emotions in the present. Then, you can just stay in that emotional state and re-enter the reverie whenever you need to refresh it or escape stress. While this may sound like a cheap trick, or another instance of positive delusion, consider that worrying—which we love to do in great amounts—is the same thing with the opposite valence. You picture a negative situation and it stresses you out for an indefinite amount of time! Emotions flare up and persist. Therefore, you can modulate them by delaying negative reactions or inducing positive emotions through imagination. This is where Stoic influence comes through in Maltz’s book. And indeed, he refers to Marcus Aurelius’ claim that “Nowhere, either with more quiet or more freedom from trouble, does a man retire than into his own soul, particularly when he has within him such thoughts that by looking into them he is immediately in perfect tranquility…”.

             Imagination is also the function by which we set complex goals for ourselves, intertwining it with cybernetic theory. We have already discussed how clear, positive visualisation bears differently on our automatic mechanisms than anxious, muddled imaginings. There is not much to add on this front. A cybernetic system is properly ordered when it has a target, and a positive target is going to bring more rewards than a negative one.

             In this essay, I have summarized what I take to be the three main ideas in Maxwell Maltz’s Psycho-Cybernetics: The self-image and the broader influence of belief over behaviour, the human nervous system as a cybernetic mechanism, and the ways in which creative imagination can modulate both of these systems. I think the self-help value of these ideas is immense, and might as well be the beginning and end of the self-help field. Most self-help books I’ve observed or explored seem to have content that appears insightful at first, but is quickly forgotten. In distilling out the psychological ideas that made Psycho-Cybernetics great, I’ve hoped to help people remember the insights by focusing on core principles and elaborating a framework rather than a method. There are plenty of methods to be found in the original book, but I think there is just as much benefit in incorporating these ideas into everyday life in one’s own personalized way.

Works cited:

          Meanwhile, Big 5 introversion is essentially a lack of extraversion. Extraversion is characterized by several facets: gregariousness, assertiveness, activity-seeking, enthusiasm, and more. Depending on the study and framework used, introversion—technically “low extraversion”—is mildly correlated with neuroticism, a separate scale measuring a propensity for negative emotions and moods like anxiety and depression. But overall, introversion is presented as a second-class trait, a lack rather than an active component of the personality. Other traits that are intuitively associated with introversion, like imaginativeness, are the domain of trait Openness in the Big 5. A handful of benefits are observed in introversion, such as a tendency to do better in academia, possibly because of a greater ability to focus on one or two topics for long stretches of time, and because introverts participate in fewer distractions [2]. But nowhere is introversion explicitly associated with interiority. That said, the statistics—based on a linguistic study of personality such as the Big 5—would have trouble showing this. It’s been argued that the Big 5’s lexical basis makes it prone to pro-social biases, since language itself is a pro-social tool [4]. Therefore, extraversion would make a bigger “splash” in the factor analysis than an asocial trait like introversion. Furthermore, to an observer, inwardness is often synonymous with opacity. Introverts are best defined by what they don’t reveal about themselves. A scientific investigation of introversion as a first-order trait would have to progress in more creative directions.

          What does the non-psychometric research on introversion/extraversion say? Studies have found that the mesocortical dopamine reward circuit, dubbed the “seeking” or “approach” system, is more active in extraverts than in introverts [3]. The reward system is what gives us an inner incentive to pursue certain activities and acquire things we want. It plays a part in attention by ‘imbuing’ things with salience, making us expectant of a reward, drawing our energy and gaze towards them. It is also the basis of addiction, as all addictive drugs potentiate the circuit in various ways. According to Panksepp, the seeking system does not correspond to pleasure exactly, but to the emotion of enthusiasm [5]. Enthusiasm, as you might recall, is one of the major sub-facets of Big 5 trait extraversion.

          All this to say that according to this research, the extravert is more expectant of reward, more incentivized to pursue and explore things in the environment, more enthusiastic, and furthermore that this might be the mechanical basis of trait extraversion. Introverts would have less activity of this system. My question is this: Is the difference so linear? It’s known that all people exhibit a wide array of behaviours and emotions, but that the stable psychometric traits best describe the ‘average point’ of those behaviours [citation needed]. Jung also thought the two types of behaviour are highly context-dependant, so that an introvert in an easy and familiar environment would be indistinguishable from an extrovert, and an extrovert left to ponder their often-ignored complexes would be anxious and inhibited. Furthermore, he thought that it is not that the magnitude of a bout of enthusiasm that is different, but that introverts and extraverts get enthusiastic about different things.

          First, I will round out a relation between the seeking system and Jungian psychology. In psychoanalysis, the fact that meaning is never inherent in the object but synthesized by the subject manifests itself as “projection”. It is the individual nervous system that imbues things with salience, as if the same person were both chasing and holding up the carrot-on-a-fishing-pole. Jung calls the function that creates these projections the Anima, because in his analyses of dreams and fantasies as well as mythology and folklore, he often found it personified as a woman (or as a man in the case of a woman—the Animus). For example, the Hindu goddess Maya, who spins the web of illusions that draw people out into the play of life. And this is exactly what the seeking system does: it produces the feeling of expectancy that spurs us into activity, into exploration, work, love, and sex.

          According to Jung—and this is where I think his ideas get the most complex, and as a result unlikely, but they are fascinating to share—the Anima is ‘more unconscious’ in the psyche of the extravert. Since they are more interested in things in the environment than the inner workings of their mind, the Anima—which is one of these ‘inner workings’—sits outside of the field of awareness. To perform its function, it accesses the consciousness of the extravert in a roundabout way. It projects all kinds of personal contents onto external objects, so that these objects accrue the meaning contained in the extrovert’s own soul. This contributes to the heightened salience of the outside world for the extravert. Meanwhile, since the introvert spends more of their waking life absorbed in their own psyche, they gain more direct access—not in explicit awareness, but in intimations—of the functioning of the Anima. Their attention is directed not at external projections, but at the Anima image itself and the meaning it carries internally. Salience is contained in ideas and feelings, and is extended to the outside world only insofar as things—be they books, artwork, activities, or people—correspond to and evoke this inner reality.

          If we put aside the more nebulous ideas about the location, function, and image of the Anima archetype, we can generate a simple hypothesis: Introverts and extraverts get enthusiastic about different things, based on a different principle. The relative difference in the quantity of seeking system activity might be accounted for by introverts encountering salient stimuli with a lower frequency rather than a lower amplitude—or, that the experimental stimuli are geared more towards the extroverted psychology. Jung expressed the context-dependency of this dynamic in a sort of allegory: An introvert and an extravert approach a castle in the countryside. The extravert expects to meet all sorts of positive things on the inside—gracious hosts, feasts, adventures—and gets excited about entering. The introvert, more anxious with respect to the environment, is worried about guard dogs and cantankerous keepers. However, they go inside. There they find it is filled with books and scrolls like an old library. The introvert’s eye is caught by this and that and scurries about in excitement. The extravert, meanwhile, is severely disappointed. This is not nearly as stimulating as they expected. They even start to become sour and cranky, more like the demeanour of a defensive introvert than their normal sanguine state. The extravert is drawn to the possibility of excitement and adventure; the introvert, to elaborations on ideas that are personal to them.

          In this essay I’ve made a small attempt to reconcile Jung’s older and more theoretical ideas about introversion with modern psychometric and neuropsychological research. My emphasis was on creating a unified conceptual interpretation of the facts and theories involved. Specifically, I think Jung’s ideas about introversion/extraversion as the direction of interest/flow of libido, as well as the projection-making Anima, have the potential to correspond well with studies of the mesocortical reward circuit or “seeking” system, provided we make a deeper study of the potential context-dependency of this system. If this turns out to be correct, it would open more questions about the “why” of this personality dimension, since the relative difference in seeking behaviour would be the manifestation of a deeper basis rather than the basis itself. Perhaps it is, as Jung suggested, something analogous to r/K selection theory [6]: the opposite survival tactics of “high defenses and low fertility” versus “low defenses and high fertility”. In any case, I think it is worth returning to the investigation of introversion/extroversion as a bipolar dimension, since the psychometric, linguistic Big 5 version doesn’t seem to do justice to the introverted type.

 Works cited: Lazy but getting there edition

 [1] Jung, C. G., & Baynes, H. G. (1926). Psychological types: Or, The psychology of individuation.

[2] ENTWISTLE, N. J. and ENTWISTLE, D. (1970), THE RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN PERSONALITY, STUDY METHODS AND ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE. British Journal of Educational Psychology, 40: 132–143. doi:10.1111/j.2044-8279.1970.tb02113.x

[3] Depue, R., & Collins, P. (1999). Neurobiology of the structure of personality: Dopamine, facilitation of incentive motivation, and extraversion. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 22(3), 491-517.

[4] Trofimova, I. (2014). Observer Bias: An Interaction of Temperament Traits with Biases in the Semantic Perception of Lexical Material. PLoS ONE, 9(1), e85677. http://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0085677

[5] Satoshi Ikemoto, Jaak Panksepp, The role of nucleus accumbens dopamine in motivated behavior: a unifying interpretation with special reference to reward-seeking, In Brain Research Reviews, Volume 31, Issue 1, 1999, Pages 6-41, ISSN 0165-0173, https://doi.org/10.1016/S0165-0173(99)00023-5.

Luscher's work is supposedly quite popular internationally, especially in Europe, but most of the commentary and research on it is exclusively in German. I can't read German so I can't investigate their validity: So, in this article, we will be taking Dr. Luscher on his word, and proceeding as if his research is sound.

Luscher's theory rests on a couple of fundamental claims. The first is that our emotional and psychological reactions to colour are deep-rooted and pre-conscious. This means that we react a certain way to colours whether we mean to or not, and even whether we know it or not. Our sensation of colour bypasses our conscious brain and interacts directly with our emotional systems and our self-regulating (“Autonomic”) nervous system (abbreviated as “ANS”).

The second is that the essential meaning of any colour is the same for everyone. Their effect on heart-rate, respiration, arousal, metabolism etc. is universal. For example, orange-red is always exciting and stimulating, while dark blue always has a calming effect. However, a person's subjective attitude towards the effects produced by a colour –  their preference for the colour – can vary widely.

This attitude is what Luscher calls the “function”. When taking the colour test, you are asked to rank the colours in order of preference. The idea is that the first colours you pick – the most preferred – are tied to emotional states that you want more of. The short-form notation for this is “+”. The next most preferred colours represent your present situation and emotional state, indicated by “x”. Next are emotional states that are neither preferred nor outright rejected, but restrained, either because the person is indifferent to them or because they are inappropriate to the current circumstances. These are indicated by “=”. Finally, the last colours picked represent states that are disagreeable. They are rejected on the grounds of being unwanted, or wanted but painfully out of reach. These are indicated by “-”.

As for the colours themselves, Luscher derived their significance and meaning in a very interesting way. Influenced by Kant, he started with purely logical distinctions. He asked, What can things do in space? They might be solid, and move things out of their path as needed, like any sturdy materiel; or they might be quiescent, adapting to other shapes, like water or air. In terms of human behaviour, this could be considered the difference between acting on the one hand, and adapting or perceiving on the other. The final terms Luscher arrived at were “Autonomous” and “Heteronomous”, meaning “self-determined” and “other-determined” respectively. (Parallels to this duality include the Chinese Yang and Yin, as well as Jung’s Animus and Anima).

What do objects do over time? They change or stay the same. In terms of human attention, this becomes a focus on a single subject (the Self), a “Concentric” attitude; or a focus on many changing objects, an “Ex-centric” attitude. (This has certain parallels with Introversion and Extraversion, although they remain separate concepts).

These two distinctions created a classic quaternity: The Autonomous-Concentric, the Heteronomous-Excentric, and so on. Now Luscher changed his methods. He wondered, What emotional states fit into each category? And then, through extensive experimentation and trial-and-error, he found colours that naturally elicited those emotional states. His theory is part empiricism and part pure logic.

The four major colours that make up the quaternity are Dark Blue, Blue-Green, Orange-Red, and Bright Yellow. Their meaning is as follows:

DARK BLUE: Contented Self-Moderation

This colour elicits a feeling of tranquility. It has a universally calming effect on the nervous system (thereby allying itself with the parasympathetic branch of the ANS). It is Heteronomous and Concentric: meaning, “other-determination of the Self”. The quietude and contentment tied to Blue is a kind of peaceful surrender, a relaxation that allows a person to interact with their deeper feelings. Dark Blue is therefore associated with a certain sensitivity, as well as tenderness towards loved ones. People in this state of dissolved tranquility also tend to be easily hurt.

BLUE-GREEN: Stable Self-Respect

Green is considered one of the “psychological primaries”, but it is not technically a primary colour. It is a mix of Blue and Yellow: it contains a certain tension of light and dark; not a thing-in-itself, but a binding-together. It represents the interlocking beliefs and memories that make up our identity. It is Autonomous and Concentric, meaning “a self-determination of the Self”. It is associated with self-assertion, conviction, obstinacy, and persistence. A person with this sense of immutable identity wants to believe their principles are correct; they want to be in full control of themselves; they have feelings of pride, prestige and even superiority.

ORANGE-RED: Active Self-Confidence

This hue is universally exciting. It stimulates the sympathetic branch of the ANS, which raises pulse, blood pressure, and respiration rate. It is especially associated with arousal and aggression. Like Green, it is Autonomous and wants to be in control; however, it is directed towards external objects (Ex-centric). It is therefore a kind of striving or hunger, associated with desire, domination, and achievement. A person in the stimulated Red state wants to exercise their strength and sexual potency, and experience the present to its fullest. They may also want to be seen as a dynamic and exciting person, bragging or showing-off to convince others of their competence.

BRIGHT YELLOW: Open-Minded Self-Development

Bright Yellow is the lightest of the major colours, and is therefore stimulating like Orange-Red, but it lacks the solidity and purpose of the latter. This colour seems to disperse and disappear into brightness. It represents spontaneity, variability, exhilaration, and hope for the future. It is Heteronomous (other-determined) and Ex-centric (focused on objects), therefore people in this open-ended state are easily carried away with excitement by new people, places, and developments. It represents a total loosening or relaxation, and the possibility of escape from intolerable circumstances. It is a relentlessly cheerful colour that often becomes irritating to the exhausted or depressed.

The four colours have many parallels in our culture. In terms of the classical elements, they are Water, Earth, Fire, and Air. In terms of the Greek Humours, they are the Phlegmatic, Melancholic, Choleric, and Sanguine temperaments. In psychiatric terminology, they are the depressive, obsessive, manic, and paranoid types.

In the Luscher Colour Test, people are expected to pick the four major colours within the first 4 or 5 of their ranking. This is because they represent important psychological and physiological needs. The other four colours of the test are, by design, less appealing (with the possible exception of violet). The genius of this is that they become a foil to the major colours. If someone picks a major colour after any of the generally unappealing colours, it indicates that the associated emotional state is undergoing a kind of suppression. Something has happened to make it intolerable: A rejected Blue might be someone who cannot relax or let themselves be sensitive; a rejected Green, someone who has fallen from grace and their self-esteem or sense of identity is in tatters. Yellow and Red rejected together often means the person is sick of stimulation: they are physically exhausted, or on the other hand, psychologically withdrawn.

Nevertheless, the major colours represent basic needs, and the underlying motivation of a person is always to meet and acquire them. Therefore a rejected major colour is a “want but can't have” or a “want, but is too painful to have”. It indicates a stress point in the personality, an anxiety. When this happens, the most preferred colour takes on a compensatory quality. It becomes exaggerated and compulsive, and even if it is the “most wanted” colour of the test-taker, it never truly satisfies them.

On the flip side, one of the “foil” auxiliary colours may be picked in the first half of the test. This indicates a generally negative attitude towards life, and is also classed as an anxiety. The nature of the anxiety differs based on the colour; but if Grey or Black are picked early, it generally means that, for whatever reason, many of the major emotional states have become intolerable and the person is resorting to desperate measures to preserve themselves.

The auxiliary colours are violet, brown, grey and black. Their meaning is as follows:

VIOLET

Violet is a mixture of Red and Blue, two opposite colours. It represents domination and surrender at the same time: an “identification”, a melding-together of subject and object. It represents a desire for a sensitive, intimate, “magical” relationship. It is also something like a waking dream: everything that is thought and imagined must become reality. Violet picked first in the test is very common among children and adolescents, who we tend to consider as living in a “fantasy land”, still protected from the harsher realities of life. (This is meant as a clue about its nature, not that adults who pick Violet first are necessarily the same way). People in the Violet state want to be seen as charming and mysterious, and look for others who can charm them in the same way: they want to “cast a spell” over others and themselves.

BROWN

This hue of Brown is Orange-Red broken down by Black: Therefore it is also tied to the sexual impulse and sensuality, but its energy and vitality are gone. It mainly represents the bodily senses, physical health, and the comfort of home. Normally, it is in the indifferent “=” category, since a well-functioning body should not be the cause of much attention. However, if brown is picked early (meaning it is desired), this indicates that the person wishes for comfort, recuperation, or home. People displaced during World War II showed an especial preference for this colour. If brown is rejected or picked last, this may indicate that the person does not want to associate with any creature comforts, thinking they are made of sterner stuff. This usually produces an anxiety that is compensated by some compulsive sensuous behaviour.

GREY

The grey is devoid of colour (achromatic), and is midway between light and dark. It neither excites nor relaxes. It represents a veil of total neutrality and detachment. In the Luscher Colour Test, it acts as a kind of fence: The colours coming after it have become intolerable, and the person wishes to wall them off with a shield of non-involvement. They may go through the motions of these states in their daily life, but entirely avoid feeling them. The colours that precede grey are thought of as the only way forward, the only emotional states with which the person is allowed to engage. If grey is picked first, this means that non-involvement is the ultimate value. If it is last, it means that the person wants to experience everything, and will do anything to avoid the horror of neutrality. Grey usually occurs in the 5th to 7th picks.

BLACK

Black is the negation of colour itself. It represents a rejection of the intolerable conditions of life, a total surrender or despair. The colours picked after black have been “given up on” and the person believes they can offer him nothing. The colours picked before black are the only things left to pursue. Black has an intensifying, volatile effect on any colour it is paired with: Yellow and Black picked together, being the brightest and darkest colours of the test, usually means that some catastrophic change is soon to occur. Black is usually picked last in the test.

The Colour Test offers thousands of different possible interpretations, based on the positions, groupings, and interplay of the colours. Decades of use have led to a lot of nuance for an experienced practitioner to keep in mind and take advantage of. Generally, a human practitioner is able to spot more interesting patterns in a set of test results that an automated system like a online quiz. The guidelines for administering and interpreting the test are in the published book, “The Luscher Color Test”.

The system of “Anxiety and Compensation” featured in the Colour Test provides the foundations for an interesting typology. In “The 4-Color Person”, Luscher describes the ideal individual: Someone who is able to balance all four emotional states with their corresponding “senses of self” (self-moderation, self-esteem, self-confidence and self-development). However, most people under-value one or another colour, resulting in an anxiety with a corresponding compensation (an over-valuation of another colour). This system of colour pairs results in 32 “unbalanced” types.

The beauty of this type system is how straightforward and intuitive it is to grasp. For example, someone who over-values Red self-confidence is simply that: over-confident. An over-valuation is a compensation covering up an anxiety: In this case, that anxiety might be tied to the inability to achieve Blue contentment, so that the person is perpetually dissatisfied. Luscher nicknames this type “The Greedy Showoff” or “The Baiting Devil”, depending on whether the exaggerated self-confidence or the lack of contentment is the dominant factor. Let's look at The Baiting Devil as an example of a combination type:

The baiting devil (Over-valued Red and rejected Blue, with an emphasis on rejected Blue)

Sense of self: Dissatisfaction; Pompous Overconfidence

Behaviour: Disquiet; Agitation; Provoke people in order to create contacts and relationships and to ward off their void (a  life which is devoid of relationships), their boredom, their deserted isolation, and their discontent

Baiting devils are dissatisfied because, although highly excitable and emotionally susceptible, they suffer from their lack of responsiveness, their monotony, and their lack of relationships with others. They feel fine if there is an intense encounter and erotic fascination in a relationship. And they like tasks in which they have to commit themselves personally and totally.

Baiting devils can't stand people who hide their true feelings behind conventional cliches and, in their boredom, create a gap and a vacuum. So they bait such people. They challenge them with direct or boorish criticism. They try to strike them in their weak points. That makes the baiting devils feel superior, thereby avenging themselves for the inadequate, unsatisfying attempt at contact or for an earlier rejection.

The solution to each type-dilemma is always to accept the rejected sense-of-self, no matter how painful that is in the short-term. In this case, the Baiting Devil must accept Blue self-moderation to ease their relentless agitation and dissatisfaction caused by its suppression. Relaxing the anxiety naturally relaxes the compensation: This person will slow their compulsive and exaggerated expression of Red aggression and showiness, if their efforts are successful. The full explanation, and a description of each type, can be found in the published book “The 4-Color Person”.

In this way, Luscher subscribes to a kind of Stoic philosophy, the one that has been largely abandoned, that states that we actually have control over how we react to life's events and tragedies -- That we create our own happiness, regardless of our circumstances. He uses this analogy: When learning to ride a bike, your circumstances have an impact. You might be in a rough neighborhood (a poor locale); you might have an old, rusted, second-hand bike (having physical defects); you might not even have a teacher (absent parents).

However, none of these things could really teach you to ride that bike anyways. This is because the last, most essential step is one that no one can teach or very well explain. To ride a bike, you have to figure out for yourself the sensation of balance. Balancing the four senses of self, achieving the right middle ground that gives you freedom and peace of mind, is something that occurs entirely within yourself, regardless of environmental factors. Again, this is like the Stoic philosophy: You cannot control events, but you can control your reaction to events. Take it for what it's worth.

Sources:

Luscher, Max, and Scott, Ian. The Luscher Color Test. New York: Random House, 1969. Print.

First, a word about the Ego. I’ve mentioned it often but I haven’t given a technical definition. The Ego is actually a complex like the others, composed of an essential grouping of mental contents, however it is not like the others listed in this article. This is because the Ego is you -- at least, the you that you experience, that you are aware of, that you define yourself as. The Ego is the centre of consciousness proper. However, the other “souls” can come into contact or clash with the Ego, creating a distortion of your conscious character and attitude. In some cases the Ego can identify itself completely with another complex, in which case the person becomes more of a solitary archetype than an individual (for example, a mother identifying completely with her role as Mother).

The persona is the mask we wear, or the role we play, in society and in our interactions with others. It’s a compromise between the subjective individual and the collective, how he ensures that society will accept him. As such, part of the defining qualities of the persona are decided by the outside world; it has one foot in, one foot out. It tends to be associated with the individual’s most differentiated functions, especially the extroverted ones. An individual can have many different personas, as many as there are areas of his life where he demonstrates a different set of behaviours. One for work, to appease his bosses and colleagues; one for home, the face he shows his family. Sometimes, the Ego might identify with the persona, in which case the individual believes that how he presents himself is how he really is. This is problematic, since he becomes an exponent of the collective rather than a real individual.

The shadow is the polar opposite of the Ego. Whatever the Ego decides it is not, the shadow enthusiastically takes hold of. It is practically the same as Freud’s id, full of repressed impulses, desires, and animal instincts. However, it’s also the source of great creativity, inspiration, and primal energy. Society is configured to repress the shadow -- spontaneity is the enemy of order. However, Jung generally believes this is a mistake. When we suppress or “get rid of” unwelcome thoughts, feelings, or impulses, they don’t disappear but only become unconscious. Therefore, a righteous, moralistic, and pure conscious attitude means the “animal in us only becomes more beastlike”, perhaps explaining the brutality of Christian wars. (In addition to having the most explosive and sudden manifestations, a repressed shadow is also projected onto one’s enemies, providing a convenient excuse for vilification and brutality). On the other hand, when the Ego is in sync with the shadow, the creativity and spontaneity become great gifts. That said, the good always comes with the bad. Becoming conscious of one’s dark side can be an enormously painful task. All the unconscious, undifferentiated functions are associated with the shadow.

The soul is really two archetypes, the anima in a man and the animus in a woman. It is the whole existence of the opposite sex in one’s own psyche, a man’s femininity and a woman’s masculinity. As a result of cultural pressures and biological factors, the anima and animus tend to be quite unconscious in men and women respectively, although to varying degrees. They become the “inner personality” -- the secret, subtle underbelly of the individual, which warrants the alternative title of “soul”. Like other unconscious contents, the soul is projected, in this case onto members of the opposite sex (especially those who closely match the qualities and characteristics of the soul-complex. In this way, the soul constitutes our pre-formed expectations in romantic relationships). This results in a passionate attraction or aversion, and the whole phenomena of infatuation. It’s as if the other person really held a piece of one’s soul. As the inner personality, the soul has another function: it guides the individual in exploring their own unconscious, even appearing as an effective “spirit guide” in dreams. Like the persona, it has one foot in, one foot out, but the latter foot rests in the collective unconscious -- the mythological “inner world”. The soul is associated with the inferior function.

Finally, there is the self. The self is the totality of the whole personality, everything that is conscious as well as unconscious. It is also the centre, the guiding, organising, unifying principle of the psyche. According to Jung, the task of a lifetime is to know the self (“self-knowledge”, duh), and by knowing it we actualise and embody it. In practise, the self is our “inner voice”, represented in certain religions by inner divinity, and in certain cultures as an “inner man/woman” or ancestor. Since, in some ways, it is a vision of what we could potentially become, it can appear in dreams and stories as a wise old man (in men) or a wise-woman (in women), although also as a cruel senex or terrifying Earth-mother. Later on, it could appear as a hermaphrodite, since it unifies both anima and animus, and even a Mandala (“magic circle”). This article actually lists the sequence of personal development in order -- before one can start to develop the self, he has to detach himself from his persona, come to terms with his shadow, and reunite with his soul. The self is the cohesive unity of all the other aspects, which was always present but only had to be discovered and listened to. The self is associated with all the functions in equal measure.