by postodave » January 5th, 2007, 2:59 pm
I have always thought Lewis was INTJ (I am INTP so you can allow for my prejudices and misunderstandings). I don't think an interest in poetry is particularly a feeling thing, if anything it is intuitive, about seeing and making wholes out of disparate matterials. As I understand it what Jung meant by feeling was roughly what other psychologists (I am thinking especially of Carl Rogers) would call valuing, though it has an emotional component it is primarily a form of judgement.
I think Lewis's experience of Joy is presented in very abstracted and intuitive terms; the things he values in this way are not concrete. This could suggest introverted feeling but I am inclined to suspect that it is rather intuition. This means that Lewis strongest trait introverted intuition is one he shares with the great mystics. But the other thing he shares with them is a capacity to express these interior experiences in rational terms, this would be through the use of extraverted thinking.
If you look at how he became a Christian, and I mean how it really happened rather than the account he gave later in Suprised by Joy, then a key event was his conversation with Tolkien and Dyson where Tolkien interpreted the incarnation as a true myth. This is a highly intuitive idea and it came to Lewis's aid precisely where rational theology had failed him. He was never able to accept any of the standard theories of the atonement as developed by say Anselm or Calvin.
However when he tries to defend the faith, he does so in rational terms using his secondary function of extraverted thinking. He admits that an emotional approach to evangelism, on which draws on the feeling or valuing function is not for him. He could not just say 'Come to Jesus.'
I think that especially later in his life he began to develop his tertiary function of feeling. As a tertiary function this was primitive compared to his primary and secondary functions; this explains his inability to understand why other did not share his evaluation of Joy Davidman, who was not a great thinker (does anyone else share my view that 'Fire on the Mountain' is a fairly poor book in spite of the praise Lewis heaps on it). The exploration of feeling and emotion in his later work and I would see as an example then of old men being explorers ( to quote Eliot).
This view has the advantage that it allows for Lewis being quite highly developed as a person and not being limmited to two functions.
So I drew my sword and got ready
But the lamb ran away with the crown