Adam Blatner

Lately I’ve come to appreciate even more Carl Jung’s ideas about introversion and extraversion, especially as I’ve watched my own fluctuations of mental “energy.” I get drained by external stimuli, distracted, overloaded, rather than energized by these sources; on the other hand, I am energized when I can process ideas through my own active creativity. This latter dynamic can seem extraverted because it is outgoing, interactive. I can teach, draw out others, lecture impromptu, dance, smile, and be very involved—so for a while I thought I might be mixed extra- and introverted; but then I realized that these pseudo-extraverted activities were merely social vehicles for my own psychic energies finding expression.

An example of this happened a few weeks ago when I was at Disneyland with my grandchildren and grandnephews. I enjoyed it, but as I’ve become more mature, I notice differences in the qualities of enjoyment, both intensity and type. Compared to quieter, more introverted experiences, well, I didn’t enjoy these rides at a deeper level in the same way or to the same degree. I also periodically felt overloaded and accommodated my need to withdraw from all the external stimuli: I brought along a little song book and read and sang some interesting songs to myself while waiting for the kids to come off a ride or while in a long-ish line waiting for a ride. I need this psychic energy coming from deep inside and through me as my source, while external sources of stimuli are a little draining. I realized that many people prefer this other channel and resonate better with it, and our tourism industry thrives because of this. I wondered how some of the kids at Disneyland were not just tired, but also cranky because they were more introverted and became fairly quickly saturated with external stimuli.