Feeling

## 1. Etymology

**Feeling** names the **psychological function that evaluates or judges what something or someone is worth**. Compare [thinking](/index/thinking/); related: rational function; value; distinct from [affect](/index/affect/).

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## 2. Plain summary

**Feeling** in Jung’s typology is a judging function—cold or warm, but about worth, not about “having feelings” in the everyday sense. It is rational like thinking because reflection decides, not bare perception. Fight-or-flight choices rest on it when value is at stake.

Do not confuse it with emotion/[affect](/index/affect/) (complex discharge with bodily innervation). Pure feeling need produce no more physical stir than ordinary thinking. A person oriented mainly by feeling is a feeling type; then thinking tends to be inferior. Related to [introversion](/index/introversion/)/[extraversion](/index/extraversion/) and to [intuition](/index/intuition/)/[sensation](/index/sensation/) as the other pair.

**Examples (exhaustive house list for this Index lemma — common feeling-function motifs named across Jung’s essays and standard Jungian lexica; not a claim that Jung’s CW contains only these):**

evaluates worth/value; rational function (with thinking); independent of external stimuli as subjective process; fight-or-flight basis; feeling type; distinct from affect/emotion; no perceptible physical innervations when uncontaminated; cold feeling possible; complementary inferior when thinking superior; pairs with [thinking](/index/thinking/) as rational pair; [opposites](/index/opposites/) of value vs concept; [persona](/index/persona/) / relationship judgments; [compensation](/index/compensation/) when one-sided.

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## 3. Academic elucidation

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## 4. Lexicon

**Sharp (1991)**

> Feeling. The psychological function that evaluates or judges what something or someone is worth. … A feeling is as indisputable a reality as the existence of an idea. … Feeling is distinguished from affect by the fact that it produces no perceptible physical innervations…

(Sharp, 1991, p. [provisional — unverified])

> typology … Some individuals are more excited or energised by the internal world and others by the external world; these are introverts and extraverts respectively… in addition… thinking, feeling, sensation, intuition…

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## 5. CW concordance — sample, not exhaustive

> I count feeling among the four basic psychological functions… I regard it as an independent function sui generis.

> Feeling is primarily a process that takes place between the ego and a given content, a process, moreover, that imparts to the content a definite value in the sense of acceptance or rejection (“like” or “dislike”).

> Feeling, therefore, is an entirely subjective process… Hence feeling is a kind of judgment, differing from intellectual judgment in that its aim is not to establish conceptual relations but to set up a subjective criterion of acceptance or rejection.

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**See also:** [thinking](/index/thinking/); [intuition](/index/intuition/); [sensation](/index/sensation/); [affect](/index/affect/); [introversion](/index/introversion/); [extraversion](/index/extraversion/); [consciousness](/index/consciousness/); [opposites](/index/opposites/). *(Queued — sensation next; typology.)*

## References

Jung, C. G. (1971). Psychological types [Definitions]. In H. Read, M. Fordham, G. Adler, & W. McGuire (Eds.), *The collected works of C. G. Jung* (R. F. C. Hull, Trans.) (Vol. 6, pp. 602–603, ¶¶723–725). Princeton University Press. (Original work published 1921)

Samuels, A., Shorter, B., & Plaut, F. (1986). *A critical dictionary of Jungian analysis*. Routledge.

Sharp, D. (1991). *Jung lexicon: A primer of terms & concepts*. Inner City Books.

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