Eye Movement

“The eye sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend.”
- Henri Bergson

"The voyage of discovery is not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes."
- Marcel Proust

    One of the first things I realized after my “insight” was that peering eye movement corresponds positionaly to the location of the cognitive functions. That is when someone consciously retrieves a stored memory they may for different lengths of time change their eye position in an attempt to “peer” into their mind.

    Here would be the positions of the eyes if you were watching someone. Try it while watching TV. I noticed a lot of television interviewers are ENFP because they are naturals at asking others future oriented personal questions without being too intimate.

    I think a lot of people have a difficult time disconnecting their own perspective and looking at things from the other person’s perspective. The confusion is similar to what occurs when looking in a mirror or when a person has something on their clothes and another person points it out by pointing to themselves. There is typically some confusion as to which side of their body they are pointing at.

    A good friend of mine is ISFJ and while she was talking about going back to Japan I noticed her look down to her left which would correspond with her dominant function of introverted sensing. I stopped her and asked her what she was looking at and she said a mental image of her house. Oh, spooky. I told her with enough practice it was like reading someone’s mind. I think I read that Carl Jung after years of counseling people became capable of finishing people’s sentences for them.

    Most people for some reason find this difficult to believe, but it can actually be proven very simply. Try the following, comfortably look up and diagonally to your right and try to describe a place that is very familiar to you like your work office or your bedroom, somewhere where you are not at the present time (sensing details i.e. just physical facts and preferably a place from your past). You will probably not be able to mention more than one or two features comfortably. Now move your eyes lower left and do the same thing. You should find the thoughts flow easily. Now do the opposite, look lower left and describe your future plans for your career or a relationship. You should find it rather difficult. Now look upper right and try again.  (Keep in mind this is a subjective test so there will be variation among individuals' ability to perceive the resistance.)   If you are familiar with the cognitive functions try developing a similar test for the judging functions.

    Do you think it’s something learned? No, I've observed even blind people do it. When I mentioned eye position and cognitive function to people at a conference on personality type they kept referring me to Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP).  I bought a book on it but haven’t had time to read it.  It’s obvious that cognitive function and field of view (external as well as internal) correspond with one another (see, Feng Shui).  In my research notes I have translated several colloquialisms such as, “seeing eye to eye”, “eyes wide open”, “shifty eyed” and “eyes are a window to the soul”.  After studying neurophysiology and human behavior from a Jungian perspective I trust you can find additional meaning in such phrases.