1. Understanding Rational Types: Extraverted Thinking (Te) and Extraverted Feeling (Fe)
Jung classifies both Extraverted Thinking (Te) and Extraverted Feeling (Fe) types as “rational” or “judging” types. This doesn’t mean they are always logical or objective, but rather that their behavior is guided primarily by deliberate, conscious judgment.
Their lives are heavily influenced by their rational functions — either logic (Te) or socially attuned values (Fe) — which they use to shape choices, organize behavior, and interact with the world. They strive for order, control, and consistency based on what is collectively considered reasonable or appropriate.
However, Jung warns that this perspective is subjective. While a person may experience their own behavior as rational and goal-directed, an outsider (especially one guided by intuition or perception) may perceive randomness, contradiction, or even irrationality. That’s because unconscious influences often leak through, leading to behavior that seems inconsistent with the person’s stated intentions.
Jung insists on basing his classification on how the individual consciously experiences themselves, not on how they appear to others. This is a critical distinction in analytical psychology: a person’s self-understanding forms a more solid psychological ground than a detached external diagnosis. He criticizes psychoanalysts like Freud and Adler for imposing their own interpretations on the unconscious without giving the individual’s self-awareness sufficient weight.
2. The Role of Judgment and Suppressed Perception
For rational types, life is shaped by reason and planning. They strive to eliminate randomness, impulsiveness, or anything they deem “irrational.” But this creates a tradeoff: perception functions (sensing and intuition) become secondary or even suppressed.
- For Te types, feeling becomes inferior.
- For Fe types, thinking is minimized.
- In both, perception (sensing and intuition) is pushed to the background and may become underdeveloped.
This repression leads to a paradox: the more rational the conscious mind, the more chaotic and primitive the unconscious may become. These unconscious contents are not just neglected—they can erupt unexpectedly, causing seemingly irrational behavior driven by childlike impulses, compulsions, or overwhelming impressions. The individual might not even understand why they acted a certain way.
From the outside, this makes it possible to mistake rational types for irrational ones, especially if one pays more attention to what happens to them (their unconscious slips) than what they intend or choose.
3. The Shadow Side of Rationality
Because rational types base their decisions on collectively accepted standards, they often repress their subjective reasoning. This inner voice — their personal sense of meaning or individual insight — is neglected in favor of what “makes sense” or “fits” with societal norms.
Over time, this repression gives rise to unconscious disturbances:
- Primitive sensations: compulsive indulgence or sensory excess.
- Distorted intuitions: irrational suspicions, paranoia, or misread social signals.
- These manifestations are often emotionally intense, yet disconnected from conscious understanding.
Ironically, what they’ve tried to avoid — disorder, unpredictability, irrationality — ends up bubbling up from the unconscious. Thus, even a deeply rational person may find their life swayed by unexpected compulsions, strange coincidences, or emotional reactions they cannot explain.
4. Understanding Irrational Types: Extraverted Sensing (Se) and Extraverted Intuition (Ne)
Jung calls the types dominated by perception — Se and Ne — “irrational”. This isn’t a judgment on intelligence or value. It simply means that their behavior is guided not by structured reasoning, but by what they perceive in the moment.
They live according to what is actually happening, not what they “should” do. Their choices are spontaneous, experiential, and grounded in the immediate present. While this makes them flexible, adaptable, and responsive, it also means their judging functions (thinking and feeling) are often underdeveloped and operate unconsciously.
5. The Nature of Irrational Decision-Making
Although these types don’t consciously analyze or weigh decisions like rational types do, judgment still exists in them — it’s just hidden. It might surface in odd ways: they may make snap decisions that seem cold or unusually calculating, or suddenly favor one person or idea without clear reasoning. These behaviors can seem either childishly naïve or unexpectedly ruthless.
To rational observers, irrational types may seem unprincipled or erratic, as if they have no clear internal compass. But the reverse is also true: irrational types may find rational people lifeless, rigid, or stifling — like they’re trying to cage life in artificial rules.
Each side misunderstands the other. Rational types see irrational types as chaotic. Irrational types see rational types as controlling. In truth, both are valid, but they prioritize very different psychological values.
6. How Rational and Irrational Types Relate (or Don’t)
Jung uses the concept of rapport — a psychological connection or mutual understanding — to explore how people of different types relate. Rational types seek rapport through shared principles or conscious agreement. They feel connected when they can explain, discuss, or agree on values.
Irrational types, by contrast, connect through shared experiences, mutual perceptions, or unspoken resonance. Their relationships are often situational: as long as the shared experience lasts, the bond is felt deeply. Once the experience passes, the connection may vanish — not due to disloyalty, but simply because the experience no longer exists.
This can be profoundly unsettling to rational types, who expect consistency. To irrational types, however, this situational bond is perfectly authentic and even more human than abstract agreements or promises.
The result: both sides often feel misunderstood. One believes the other is unreliable or irrational; the other believes their counterpart is rigid or lifeless.
7. Projection and Miscommunication
Most human relationships involve some level of projection: we assume others think or feel as we do. When people of different types interact, this can lead to deep misunderstandings:
- The rational type assumes the other shares their judgments and values.
- The irrational type senses an emotional or experiential connection the rational type isn’t aware of.
Eventually, these projections break down, often painfully, because the psychological foundation wasn’t actually shared.
According to Jung, modern Western culture tends to favor the extraverted rational model — structured, socially approved, and outwardly consistent. Introversion and irrational modes of relating are tolerated but considered exceptions.
Conclusion
Jung’s analysis of psychological types isn’t about labeling people as “logical” or “emotional”, “good” or “bad”. It’s about understanding the deep, often invisible structure behind how people relate to the world — whether through judgment or perception, logic or feeling, planning or spontaneity.
- Rational types (Te/Fe): Value order, clarity, shared norms, and reason.
- Irrational types (Se/Ne): Value experience, immediacy, and openness to what life presents.
Each type has strengths — and each has blind spots. True psychological understanding means not just recognizing your own type, but learning to relate to those who live and think in a profoundly different way.
Ontolokey 
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