Intrapersonal Intelligence: A Definitive Guide [5 Examples]

OVERVIEW: This in-depth guide explores every facet of intrapersonal: intrapersonal intelligence, skills, and communication. We’ll examine many interpersonal intelligence examples and characteristics as well.

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How well do you know yourself?

Are you introspective?

Can you accurately predict how you’ll behave in a particular scenario?

Are you tuned in to how you’re feeling throughout the day?

Do you reflect on your experiences from events to understand their meaning?

These questions represent various qualities of intrapersonal intelligence—an essential set of abilities for psychological development and internal growth. (It’s also highly beneficial for the workplace.)

Let’s dive in …

CONTENTS

What is Intrapersonal Intelligence?

Intrapersonal is everything that occurs or exists within an individual. Intrapersonal intelligence is marked by the ability to know oneself.

Individuals with intrapersonal intelligence are adept at knowing what they are feeling and thinking. Introspective at their core, they can regulate their emotions and negotiate with their impulses.

Self-reflection, self-analysis, and self-observation are key elements to understanding one’s subjective experience.

Self-knowledge and self-understanding are the basis for intrapersonal intelligence.

Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences

Howard Gardner’s Theory of Multiple Intelligences

Psychologist Howard Gardner proposed the theory of multiple intelligences in Frames of Mind (1983) and a series of subsequent books.

Instead of assuming that IQ is the exclusive mark of intelligence, Gardner provides evidence that individuals possess multiple forms of intelligence to varying degrees and can further develop.

Gardner highlighted eight forms of intelligence in his original treatise:

Logical-mathematical
Visual-spatial
Intrapersonal
Interpersonal
Bodily-kinesthetic
Verbal-linguistic
Musical
Naturalist

Logical-mathematical, verbal-linguistic, and visual-spatial intelligence are most closely related to IQ.

Many academics dislike Gardner’s model because they say it lacks sufficient empirical research. They also contend that these “intelligences” are just talents, abilities, and traits.

However, Gardner’s model is popular among many educators. A growing body of data suggests that various forms of intelligence exist—even if they don’t neatly fit under Gardner’s classifications. (More on this below.)

Interpersonal versus Intrapersonal Intelligence

First, let’s clarify a few definitions to avoid confusion.

Intrapersonal intelligence is the ability to examine, understand, and regulate oneself.

Interpersonal intelligence is the ability to manage social situations.

Intrapersonal intelligence directs one’s attention inward. Intrapersonal communication, for example, is the ability to dialogue with oneself.

In contrast, interpersonal intelligence directs one’s attention outward. Interpersonal communication is the ability to relate to and empathize with others.

Intrapersonal Intelligence versus Emotional Intelligence

You’re probably familiar with the term emotional intelligence (EI). EI was popularized by psychologist Daniel Goleman’s bestseller Emotional Intelligence (1995).

The five components Goleman outlines for emotional intelligence are:¹

Self-awareness
Self-regulation
Empathy
Social Skills
Motivation

Self-awareness, self-regulation, and motivation are also defining characteristics of intrapersonal intelligence.

Social skills are part of interpersonal intelligence. Empathy is an aspect of both intelligences because to empathize, you need to understand your feelings to read and relate to other people’s emotions.

The integral community (also called transpersonal psychology) prefers to use terms like emotional intelligence and social intelligence instead of intrapersonal and interpersonal intelligence. These terms are similar but not the same in meaning.

Intrapersonal intelligence is also tied to cognitive intelligence based on psychologist Jean Piaget’s theory of cognitive development.

There’s considerable research and verification in developmental psychology for Piaget’s model and emotional intelligence.

In integral theory, instead of multiple intelligences, the term is “streams of development” or “lines of development.”

Lines of Development in Ken Wilber’s “AQAL” Integral Map
(source: formlessmountain.com)

Intrapersonal Intelligence is Essential for Psychological Development

Regardless of the various terminology used, what intrapersonal intelligence represents is essential for psychological development—the primary topic we cover on this website.

Intrapersonal Intelligence is necessary for developing:

Intrapersonal intelligence is foundational if you want to do:

There’s no self-discovery journey if you’re not developing intrapersonal intelligence along the way.

The intrapersonal is critical to understanding yourself and predicting human behavior.

Five Intrapersonal Intelligence Examples

Let’s run through a few real-life examples that highlight various aspects of intrapersonal intelligence:

Example 1: Evaluating Your Accomplishments and Failures

Anyone can set a goal for themselves, and they will either achieve it or fail to do so. However, people with intrapersonal skills are likely to spend time reflecting on their goals, accomplishments, and failures.

Was it worth my investment in time?
Was the emotional payout worthwhile?
Would I pursue the same objectives if I knew then what I know now?
What could I have done differently to avoid setbacks?
What could I have done differently to make it go smoother?

These types of questions spring to mind for the intrapersonally-minded.

Example 2: Preparing Ahead of Time

Individuals with intrapersonal communication skills know themselves well. This helps them plan and prepare accordingly.

For example, if they know they have an intense, stressful work meeting the next morning, they will take action in advance.

They will likely ensure they are fully ready the night before. To help them relax, they may block off extra time to meditate or do breathwork in the morning. They’ll also prepare or order a light breakfast that they know won’t upset their stomach.

Example 3: Reflecting on a Difficult Conversation

In general, those who have developed intrapersonal intelligence are highly reflective. If they have a difficult conversation with their spouse, friend, or co-worker, they are more likely to examine what transpired.

They’ll want to understand what they are feeling and why. If they are doing shadow work, they’ll evaluate if they got emotionally triggered and seek to understand how it happened.

They may play the conversation back in their mind multiple times to gather more information they missed when it happened.

Example 4: Evaluating Habits and Changing Behaviors

Everyone wrestles with issues of impulse control. Someone with intrapersonal skills is likely hyper-aware of their various tendencies and habits that don’t support them.

They are more likely to analyze their behavioral patterns to understand the sequence of events that leads to unsupportive habits. They are also more effective at negotiating with the various parts of themselves than others.

Example 5: Pondering the Meaning of Life

The average person observes what others are doing and tries to follow along or conform to their style. For the intrapersonally adept, this is unacceptable behavior.

They want to understand why. Why are people doing this or that? For example, why are we forced to go to school and get conditioned with all sorts of nonsense that don’t serve us at all in later life? Why?

As individuals develop greater levels of intrapersonal intelligence, they often reflect on the meaning of life. Existentialism is often a part of this investigation. They may read the classics from Ancient Greece or study various philosophers, mystics, or religious teachings.

Ultimately, they will not settle for any meaning provided externally. Instead, they will need to discover meaning within themselves.

How Intrapersonal Intelligence Influences Personality

Intrapersonal intelligence influences virtually every aspect of one’s personality including their type, motivations, emotions, and archetypal expressions.

Let’s take a closer look at these important dimensions.

Intrapersonal Intelligence and Personality Types

Why do some people seem to have more intrapersonal intelligence than others?

The answer largely comes down to personality types. In the language of Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung’s Psychological Types, intuitive thinkers and intuitive feelers have a natural edge with intrapersonal intelligence.

In general, intrapersonal skills also tend to come more naturally to introverted types (as opposed to extroverts). This is because introverts direct their energy inward while extroverts direct their attention outward.

For example, in the Enneagram personality system, Type 5 (Investigator) is intrinsically wired with intrapersonal skills.

Of course, this doesn’t mean that any personality type doesn’t have or can’t develop intrapersonal skills. Again, this “intelligence” represents essential cognitive faculties related to healthy psychological development in general.

Intrinsic Motivation and Intrapersonal Skills

One of the greatest benefits of developing intrapersonal skills is in the area of motivation.

Many don’t realize how much of our behavior is externally driven (extrinsic motivation).

That is, the average person is driven almost exclusively by social forces:

What we believe
What we wear
Who we associate with
Where we live
How we live
Daily patterns of behavior
Social media habits

Often, the drive to “fit in” is subconscious. Psychologist Abraham Maslow referred to this drive as the need to belong.

When our behaviors and decisions are shaped solely by observing others, we operate largely through subconscious programming, which the ancient Taoists referred to as mundane conditioning.

Even basic habits the masses adopt—for example, using a mobile phone—are largely driven by external forces.

(In fact, savvy marketers understand the principle of “social proof” and conformity all too well. They use this psychological tension to increase mass adoption of their goods and services.)

As you become more adept at navigating your internal terrain, you shift the locus of control within yourself.

Now, you can evaluate what matters most to you. You become intrinsically motivated, adapting your behaviors accordingly. This shift from extrinsic to intrinsic motivation is essential for individuation.

Intrapersonal Intelligence and Your Emotional Life

Intrapersonal intelligence isn’t just about thinking and evaluating; it’s also about navigating your emotional landscape.

Cultivating emotional awareness is an integral aspect of knowing oneself.

When we’re tuned into our emotional field, it’s easier to:

Enjoy what we do,
Make effective decisions,
Understanding ourselves, and
Relate to others.

For example, with decision-making, it’s easy to rationalize any decision. But the reality is that we make decisions from our unconscious and emotional field (subconscious) first; then, we rationalize our decisions afterward.²

Intrapersonally skilled individuals are connected to their emotions and can use this form of “information” to help guide their decisions.

Consciously, we often think we like doing something, but unconsciously, we have resistance.

With intrapersonal intelligence, we can explore the nature of this internal resistance and find ways of resolving these tensions.

The Archetypes of Intrapersonal Intelligence

Another way of illustrating intrapersonal traits is through archetypes.

Archetypes represent set patterns of behavior that exist within what Carl Jung called the collective unconscious. Archetypes are impersonal, universal images, so when we understand an archetypal expression, we can decode its patterns.

For example, here’s a list of archetypes related to intrapersonal intelligence:

Sage
Philosopher
Writer
Magician
Ritual Elder
Wise Old Man/Woman
Alchemist
Mystic

Think, for example, of the archetypal philosopher sitting in self-reflection, smoking a pipe.

In J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings series, Gandalf the Wizard represented the quintessential philosopher-sage archetype.

Gandalf is highly knowledgeable, thoughtful, and introspective.

When he comes in possession of the One Ring, he doesn’t rush to hide it, get rid of it, or destroy it. Instead, he lights up his pipe and sits by the fire in Bilbo’s house for a long time. Thinking. Reflecting. Musing.

The great wizard stayed relatively still as if waiting for the right answer to present itself.

10 Intrapersonal Skills for the Workplace

While intrapersonal intelligence is vital for understanding ourselves, it also provides many benefits in our work life.

Examples of intrapersonal skills include:

Focusing on a task
Discipline and motivation
Effective decision making
Time management
Giving and receiving feedback
Emotional resilience
Brainstorming
Strategic planning
Visualization
Delegation of responsibility

Let’s take a closer look at each intrapersonal skill example.

Focus on Important Tasks

As you work toward your results, you can more easily focus on a task and overcome common distractions.

With intrapersonal intelligence, you’re more aware of when you’re overdoing it, when you need to take a break, and when it’s time to “power through.” You’re also more adept at noticing when you’re getting distracted or procrastinating.

Disciple & Motivation to Follow Through

As we covered above, with intrapersonal skills, you understand your true motivations, which is essential for self-regulation. This insight helps raise your standards and drives you toward your end objectives (that you likely clarify initially).

In his bestseller Drive, Daniel Pink highlights insights from self-determination theory. Instead of being driven by money, our deeper motivations come through purpose, autonomy, and mastery—all three of which are related to intrapersonal intelligence.

Effective Decision Making

With greater insight into one’s personality, motivations, and behavior, making effective decisions that lead to positive work results is easier.

Skillful Time Management

While the business world loves the idea of “time management apps” and techniques, the reality is that knowing yourself helps you better gauge how long something will take.

With discipline, you block off time to accomplish the task without needless distractions.

Effective Feedback

Feedback is essential for learning and growth. Effective feedback is a powerful leadership and management skill. Receiving and evaluating feedback from others is also highly beneficial.

Emotional Resilience

It’s difficult to appreciate the profound role emotions play in the workplace. That’s why emotional intelligence is a more important factor than IQ when it comes to outperforming leadership in business.³

Emotional regulation and resilience are vital intrapersonal skills that benefit us greatly. Are your thoughts and attitudes becoming negative and unproductive? An important intrapersonal skill is identifying and addressing negative thoughts as they arise.

Brainstorming & Idea Generation

Individuals with intrapersonal skills are very comfortable in their minds; they enjoy playing with concepts and generating new ideas.

Under the right conditions, they become a key resource for brainstorming and creative problem-solving sessions.

Strategic Thinking & Planning

How can you make informed decisions that solve difficult problems while staying focused on the future? How do you map out plans and strategies for moving forward within your business or organization?

With intrapersonal skills, strategic thinking becomes second nature.

Visualization

Visualization is an intrapersonal skill that builds on several other abilities we highlighted above.

Visualization helps us “begin with the end in mind” which helps us focus on our end goals so we follow through with greater discipline. Visualization also helps create mental pictures of various scenarios. This helps with brainstorming and strategic planning.

Delegation of Responsibility

Understanding your strengths and weaknesses helps you observe the strengths and weaknesses of others. This insight is powerful in team dynamics as it helps you delegate responsibility in ways that benefit everyone.

Careers Oriented Toward the Intrapersonal Intelligence

Like each personality type, each expression of intelligence provides a disposition to one form of vocation or another. Instinctively, we all try to find ways to play to our strengths.

Here are some examples of vocations someone with higher intrapersonal intelligence may be attracted to:

Psychologist / Therapist
Philosopher / Theorist
Entrepreneur / Self-employed
Writer
Counselor
Historian
Theologian
Coach (Life, Business or Behavioral)

Because individuals with intrapersonal intelligence enjoy spending time alone, they are more likely to go into professions where they can either work alone or in a small team.

The Potential Pitfalls of Intrapersonal Intelligence

Before we explore ways of developing stronger intrapersonal skills, let’s highlight the potential pitfalls. Every superpower has a shadow side.

Individuals with high levels of intrapersonal intelligence risk becoming too inwardly focused. They can get lost in their minds.

At the extreme, they become divorced from any form of objective reality and subsumed in their subjective fantasies, entering a state of delusion.

They risk becoming overly intellectual or cerebral at the expense of other lines of intelligence and important areas of focus within one’s life. (For example, this happens when academics are stuck in their ivory towers and divorced from the real world.)

I suspect this is why many educators and laypersons appreciate Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligence: it reminds us that many dimensions of our humanity exist that can benefit from our attention.

Overcoming these potential pitfalls requires full engagement with one’s life—both internal and external.

Also, those with strong intrapersonal skills will benefit if they develop stronger body-kinesthetic intelligence.

Using intrapersonal intelligence involves putting energy into our minds. Too much energy in our heads leads to rumination, anxiety, and burnout.

By developing greater body awareness, we can rebalance this energy into our whole being. One highly beneficial practice in this area is called Zhan Zhuang (an ancient standing method).

Self-Awareness: The Key to Intrapersonal Intelligence

Whether we call it “intelligence” or something else, we’re ultimately talking about developing and cultivating skills.

The skills, in this context, relate to the ability to understand yourself:

What you’re thinking
What you’re feeling
What you want
What you don’t want
And why.

To gain self-knowledge, we must cultivate self-awareness.

Self-awareness requires two related skills:

Self-observation: our ability to observe without judgment our thoughts, behaviors, feelings, attitudes, moods, and impulses.
Self-regulation: our ability to negotiate and manage what we internally observe.

Attention is the key to cultivating skill in any area. By focusing our attention (energy) on something, we can naturally learn through feedback.

Those who possess a high degree of intrapersonal intelligence have, either consciously or instinctively, directed a significant portion of their attention on their inner terrain and learned from repeated experiences.

But anyone can do this. It mainly requires an internal decision that’s reinforced daily.

How to Develop Intrapersonal Intelligence

Given that intrapersonal intelligence is a skill, how can we further develop and refine it through direct practice?

How you approach intrapersonal development will depend on your personality type and your current level of sensitivity to your inner world.

First, I’ll present a series of exercises and activities you can do if you’re just starting to develop intrapersonal intelligence.

Then, I’ll offer methods and practices for those who are looking to refine their existing skills.

Intrapersonal Skills for Beginners

If you’re early in developing intrapersonal skills, it’s useful to take various assessments, learn about your personality, and then reflect on your life experiences and how you currently perceive yourself.

This process leads to greater self-knowledge. Also, as you pay more attention to what you learn from these assessments, you’ll naturally improve your intrapersonal skillset.

Here are a few assessments you might explore:

Personality Assessments

Popular personality assessments include the Enneagram, the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, and Human Design Engineering. Each assessment will reveal different aspects of your personality.

The Enneagram, for instance, highlights your primary desires, fears, strengths, weaknesses, and common behavioral patterns, which you likely exhibit during stress and healthy development.

You can easily find free and paid personality assessments online.

Values Assessment

Individuals with highly developed intrapersonal skills know what they value. (According to Daniel Goleman, knowing one’s values is also part of emotional intelligence.)

Intrapersonally aware individuals know their values and hierarchy of importance. This knowledge helps them make effective decisions and find greater contentment in their work, leading to stronger motivation skills.

Everyone has a different set of core values. Here’s a list of over 200 core values to give you an idea of what’s available to you. If you want to determine your values, here’s my 7-Step Discovery Assessment you can go through on your own.

Strengths Assessment

Those with intrapersonal skills also know their innate strengths and weaknesses. As with values, knowing your strengths and blindspots is an integral part of knowing your personality.

You can take the VIA Character Institute free survey to help determine your strengths and weaknesses.

How to Use These Assessments

The key to using the above assessments for intrapersonal skill-building is to take the insights you obtain from these assessments and apply self-observation.

For example:

Watch yourself expressing your personality type tendencies throughout the day.
Notice how it feels when you’re living in alignment with your values and strengths.
Observe what happens when you violate your core values.

Now, here are some other exercises and activities to help promote intrapersonal intelligence.

Spend More Time Alone

The reason why extroverts sometimes lack intrapersonal skills is that they draw their energy from others. Introverts, in contrast, draw energy from themselves.⁴

As a consequence, extroverts frequently have an aversion to being alone. Yet, to develop intrapersonal skills, we need to sit with ourselves—to draw our attention fully inward.

So do what you can to spend more time in solitude. Go for walks in nature—not as a social activity with others—but to enjoy being alone in the woods. It can be an incredibly instructive and healing experience.

Meditation Practice

Meditation is another quintessential intrapersonal skill-building exercise. With meditation, you sit alone with your thoughts.

Focusing on a 20-minute-a-day meditation practice is not enough. You should also cultivate a more meditative and reflective mindset, observing your thoughts, breathing, and feelings.

If you’re new to this topic, here’s an in-depth meditation training guide for beginners.

Reflective Journalling

Finally, another useful tool for building intrapersonal skills is keeping a journal in which you can record your thoughts, dreams, aspirations, fears, and other details about your inner world.

In general, the process of recording your thoughts, feelings, and dreams helps cultivate greater self-reflection.⁵

When you’re using a journal, it’s unlikely that you’re going to record what you’re doing in life as you might with a diary. Instead, you’re going to have a kind of dialogue with yourself. Over time, you’ll develop an “inner voice” that you writing from.

The key to using a journal in this way is to remain curious about yourself and ask questions about your inner world.

How to Refine Your Intrapersonal Skills

Exercising your intrapersonal muscles more deeply brings us into the realm of depth psychology and the unconscious.

At one level, the personal unconscious is everything we don’t know about ourselves—often called the Shadow. On another level, the unconscious represents our physical bodies.

Both of these dimensions—the shadow and our bodies—are important if you want to deepen your intrapersonal skills.

In becoming more intimate with your unconscious, you gain access to a wide range of information that is otherwise unavailable to you (hence “unconscious”).

These insights can then inform your:

Knowledge of yourself
Understanding your behavior and that of others
Emotional landscape
Perception of reality
Methods of dealing with problems
Ways of communicating with others

So how can we forge a stronger connection with our unconscious?

Cognitive Development

For starters, it’s highly instructive to invest time learning from the pioneers and mind voyagers who spent their lives navigating the psyche.

Jung’s body of work is a prime example of this type of inquiry. If you’re new to Jung’s work, see this Beginner’s Guide to Jungian Psychology.

The Jungian community also has many insightful authors. Some of my favorites include Marie-Louise von Franz, Jung’s protege, Esther Harding, and Robert A. Johnson. Johnson’s work is arguably the most accessible to laypeople.

See my picks for the best Jungian books for specific recommendations.

Read Hermann Hesse

If you enjoy reading fiction, author Hermann Hesse’s work is brilliant. Hesse was greatly influenced by Jung’s insights, and his writings capture much of their essence. See, for example, Demian or Siddhartha.

Here’s a small excerpt from Hesse’s classic Siddhartha:

Slower, he walked along in his thoughts and asked himself: “But what is this, what you have sought to learn from teachings and from teachers, and what they, who have taught you much, were still unable to teach you?”

And he found: “It was the self, the purpose and essence of which I sought to learn. It was the self, I wanted to free myself from, which I sought to overcome. But I was not able to overcome it, could only deceive it, could only flee from it, only hide from it. Truly, no thing in this world has kept my thoughts thus busy, as this my very own self, this mystery of me being alive, of me being one and being separated and isolated from all others, of me being Siddhartha! And there is no thing in this world I know less about than about me, about Siddhartha!”

In 150 words, Hesse captures the essence of the intrapersonal life.

Get to Know Your Shadow

I don’t think you can develop any true depth in intrapersonal intelligence without confronting, getting to know, and integrating your shadow.

Again, the shadow is everything we currently don’t know about ourselves. It’s our disowned self that influences virtually everything we do.

In getting to know our shadow we bring all of our hidden traits, impulses, attitudes, and judgments to consciousness and reconcile with them.

See this in-depth guide to shadow work.

Embrace Your Dream World

Jung used two primary methods of inner work to help his patients understand and heal their psyches.

The primary method was dream analysis. For Jung, our dreams were ultimately our unconscious trying to communicate with our conscious minds. By analyzing his dreams and those of his patients, he was able to build consciousness and heal the divided psyche in many of his patients.

Thankfully, you don’t need to be a dream symbol expert or go to an analyst to benefit from your dreams. Simply paying more attention to and recording your dreams can be highly instructive—even if you don’t understand their full meaning.

Jung’s other method, active imagination, is an even more practical way of developing intrapersonal intelligence. We’ll discuss it in the intrapersonal communication section below.

Familiarize Yourself with Universal Virtues

While values are an integral aspect of developing intrapersonal skills early on, virtues begin to play a more central role later in our development. While values are personal, virtues are universal. They represent the highest moral qualities of our humanity.

Recall from above that the quintessential intrapersonal archetype is the philosopher-sage. The philosopher-sage plays two vital roles: cognitive development and moral refinement. It’s this latter role of moral refinement that brings virtues into the forefront of our consciousness.

Here’s a master list of virtues from the ancient traditions.

Two Levels of Intrapersonal Communication

We’ve discussed the ins and outs of intrapersonal intelligence and the skills we learn along the way.

However, there’s one vital component we must still address: intrapersonal communication.

Intrapersonal communication is how we develop many dimensions of our self-knowledge.

What is Intrapersonal Communication?

Intrapersonal communication means dialoguing with oneself. It’s a kind of internal monologue that occurs continuously within our minds.

Intrapersonal communication occurs when we think, write, read, listen, and dream. This stream of psychic material can be conscious or subconscious.

Through this internal dialogue, we get feedback from ourselves. Intrapersonal communication enables us to:

Cultivate self-awareness,
Understand what we’re feeling,
Regulate our impulses, and
Manage our expectations.

It’s through ongoing intrapersonal communication with ourselves that we develop our self-identity—how we perceive ourselves.

Now, let’s take a look at the two fundamental levels of intrapersonal communication.

Basic Level of Intrapersonal Communication

The basic level of intrapersonal communication is internal dialogue. It is closely linked to the stream of consciousness that we associate with our sense of self.

Perhaps the easiest way to understand this level of intrapersonal communication is through journaling where you write out what you’re thinking, feeling, or subjectively experiencing at that moment.

In this process, you’re essentially writing a script of your internal monologue.

Writing, in general, illustrates how intrapersonal communication works.

For example, in writing these long-form, in-depth guides, I sometimes hit a wall. Perhaps I’m not entirely clear about what I want to say or the order in which to say it.

Instead of wrestling with this internal block, I’ll get up from my desk and go for a walk.

Even though I’ve stopped writing, the writer’s voice continues working on the issue. I tune into and listen to the monologue.

Then, when clarity arrives, I can sit back down and complete the task at hand.

Deeper Level of Intrapersonal Communication

What’s described above is something we all can relate to as we all engage in this internal dialogue at various levels all of the time.

But there’s a deeper and more significant form of intrapersonal communication that’s occurring outside of most people’s awareness.

This level of communication requires us to build more consciousness to discern it. This deeper level relates to Jung’s other method for exploring the unconscious: active imagination.

To understand what active imagination represents, we need to lay some groundwork first …

Dialoguing With Oneself

What does it mean to have an internal dialogue?

That is, who or what exactly are we talking to?

The underlying assumption here is that we have a singular “I” or self, and that “I” is dialoguing with itself.

The psychological ego is one’s perceived sense of self. Humanistic psychologist Carl Rogers used the term self-concept.

Social psychologist Roy Baumeister defined self-concept as:⁶

“The individual’s belief about himself or herself, including the person’s attributes and who and what the self is.”

So, we could say that this ego or self-concept is listening to and talking to one’s mind, commonly called “self-talk.”

This understanding is valid. However, if we “look under the hood” and explore the psyche more carefully, we must adjust our understanding.

The “parts” inside of us from Pixar’s film Inside Out

The Archetypes Within the Psyche

Jung highlighted the host of characters within our psyche. He referred to them as primordial images or archetypes.

These archetypes operate semi-autonomously within our psyche. They influence virtually all our behavior and inner world, including our thoughts, feelings, impulses, and attitudes.

Since Jung, numerous psychologists have either built on Jung’s insights or independently arrived at a similar understanding, including:

James Hillman’s Archetypal Psychology
Robert Schwartz’s Internal Family Systems (IFS)
Hal and Sidra Stone’s Voice Dialogue
Piero Ferrucci’s Psychosynthesis
John Rowan’s Subpersonalities

Each model is based on the understanding that the self contains multiple parts. The mind is, in essence, a collection of minds based on both personal experiences and collective predispositions (the archetypes).

The Pixar film Inside Out provided a visual interpretation of the deeper level of intrapersonal communication being expressed here.

Each character/archetype in the film represents a different emotional expression with various behavioral patterns that influence the individual.

What is Active Imagination?

With this understanding, we can review Jung’s active imagination process.

Active imagination is the process of dialoguing with the archetypes or parts within one’s psyche.

We can use this method of intrapersonal communication to bring the characters of our unconscious into consciousness.

Through this introspective process, we learn about these archetypal forms, including their attitudes, feelings, desires, and behavioral patterns. Ideally, we bring them into harmony within us.

This advanced form of intrapersonal communication helps us build consciousness and heal the splits within our psyche, arriving at what Jung called wholeness.

This Practical Guide to Active Imagination outlines the steps for this form of intrapersonal communication.

Recap: Welcome to the Intrapersonal Landscape

Intrapersonal intelligence is the ability to know, understand, and relate to oneself. It is one of multiple intelligences, and it is essential for psychological development.

Intrapersonal communication helps us cultivate self-awareness, self-leadership, self-mastery, self-discipline, and intrinsic motivation. It allows us to navigate through our inner world, including our thoughts, feelings, images, dreams, and impulses.

Intrapersonal skills are vital for healthy development and provide a powerful arsenal of abilities for the workplace.

Intrapersonal communication has various modes of expression, including internal monologue. On a deeper level, it translates to dialoguing with the subpersonalities within our psyche. This type of internal communication can help heal the splits within the psyche and bring us to wholeness.

Selected Intrapersonally-Inspired Books

The following books express different aspects of the intrapersonal:

Demian by Hermann Hesse

Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse

The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

Man’s Search for Meaning by Victor Frankl

If You Want to Write by Brenda Ueland