Changing your personality type.

Can a person consciously, as an act of the will, choose to become an introvert or an extrovert? Can I change my personality type, purposely and consciously? Joseph Campbell, in a quote I’ll include in this post, wrote that it’s possible. I’m not sure I agree. I think that a powerful experience can drive a person inside, into an introversion, or outside to an extroverted behavior. But this isn’t a conscious act of the will.

If a lost love or a financial crisis drives a person from extroversion to introversion, or visa-versa, this isn’t an act of free will. It is, however, a change in personality type.

I’m really intrigued by the idea that we can change. I’d like to be more extroverted – to be able to put my attention outside of myself instead of internalizing all my feelings and observations. I can’t remember where I read it, but I seem to remember that Jung felt that our personality types can be altered by the influence of our circle of friends. For example, an introvert who is surrounded by extroverts can be influenced into becoming more extroverted. Can we really? Maybe, maybe maybe. I’d like to think so. I’m feeling ready to get out of my own head.

Here’s that quote from The Hero With a Thousand Faces, by Joseph Campbell:

“Willed introversion, in fact, is one of the classic implements of creative genius and can be employed as a deliberate device. It drives the psychic energies into depth and activates the lost continent of unconscious infantile and archetypal images. The result, of course, may be a disintegration of consciousness more or less complete (neurosis, psychosis: the plight of spellbound Daphne); but on the other hand, if the personality is able to absorb and integrate the new forces, there will be experienced an almost superhuman degree of self-consciousness and masterful control. This is a basic principle of the Indian disciples of yoga. It has been the way, also of many creative spirits of the West.”