Since it is conditioned subjectively and is only secondarily concerned with the object, it
seldom appears on the surface and is generally misunderstood. It is a feeling which seems to devalue the object, and it therefore manifests itself for the most part negatively.
The existence of positive feeling can be inferred only indirectly. Its aim is not to adjust itself to the object, but to subordinate it in an unconscious effort to realize the underlying images.
The depth of this feeling can only be guessed - it can never be clearly grasped.
It makes people silent and difficult of access; it shrinks back like a violet from the brute nature of the object in order to fill the depths of the subject. It comes out with negative judgments or assumes an air of profound indifference as a means of defense.
It is principally among women that I have found the predominance of introverted feeling. 'Still waters run deep' is very true of such women. They are mostly
silent, inaccessible, and hard to understand; often they hide behind a childish or banal mask, and their temperament is inclined to melancholy. They
neither shine nor reveal themselves. As they are mainly guided by their subjective feelings, their true motives generally remain hidden. Their
outward demeanor is harmonious and inconspicuous, giving an impression of pleasing repose, or of sympathetic response, with
no desire to affect others, to impress, influence, or change them in any way.
If this outward aspect is more pronounced, it arouses a suspicion of indifference and coldness, which may actually turn into a disregard for the comfort and well-being of others. One is distinctly aware then of the movement of feeling away from the object. With the normal type, however, this happens only when the influence of the object is too strong. The feeling of harmony, therefore, lasts only so long as the object goes its own moderate way and makes no attempt to cross the other's path.
There is little effort to respond to the real emotions of the other person, which tend to be damped and rebuffed, or to put it more aptly, are 'cooled off' by a negative value judgment. Although there is a constant readiness for a peaceful and harmonious co-existence,
strangers are shown no touch of amiability, no gleam of responding warmth, but are met with apparent indifference or a repelling coldness. Often they are made to feel entirely superfluousness.
Faced with anything that might carry her away or arouse enthusiasm, this type observes a benevolent though critical neutrality, coupled with a faint trace of superiority that soon takes the wind out of the sails of a sensitive person.
Any stormy emotion, however, will be struck down with murderous coldness, unless it happens to catch the woman on her unconscious side - that is, unless it hits her feelings by arousing a primordial image. In that case, she simply feels paralyzed for the moment, and this in due course invariably produces an even more obstinate resistance which will hit the other person in his most vulnerable spot. As far as possible, the relation of feeling to the object is kept to the safe middle path, where
passion and its intemperateness are resolutely tabooed.
Expression of feeling, therefore, remains niggardly, and the other person has a permanent sense of being undervalued once he becomes conscious of it.