The Case for Intuition

A mental process has repeatedly been observed and described under different names, such as intuition, flair, hunch, revelation, sudden insight (Einfall), creative ideas, inspiration etc. This process is characterized by the sudden emergence of a new and often startling idea or insight at any odd moment, without apparent preparation and definitely without the co-operation of conscious mental processes such as thinking. The phenomenon has been observed by scientists, by artists but also by common people. The creative ideas produced may belong to the realm of science, of art and of religion, but also pertain to social life. The phenomena have been observed and described too often to be doubted. One would expect that this curious mental phenomenon would have interested the psychologists, but rather the opposite is the case. Most leading psychologists ignore it, some try to rationalize it away, very few freely acknowledge its existence. The attitude of the psychologist seems widely to depend on his geographical location: Americans and Russians ignore it, the Germans and French, on the whole, accept its existence. Those who theorize on intuition agree that it is an unconscious process, the final result only becoming conscious, whereas the beneficiaries of intuitive insights tend to consider it as a revelation of a hidden truth and therefore as infallible. Most psychologists as far as they have dealt with the problem of intuition at all, believe that the intuitive way of gaining knowledge is just as fallible as conscious reasoning. A few, like Freud after 1930, belittle intuition as mere guesswork, to believe in its reliability is an illusion. C. G. Jung is the only modern psychologist who squarely put intuition on the same level with thinking. His intuitive type is not smarter than the thinking type but smart in a different way. Thinking will solve problems which intuition would not solve and vice versa. Those who have enjoyed the benefit of intuitively obtained creative thoughts have practically put intuition on one level with inspiration. Many intuitions, as described by those who had them, were actually premonitions, anticipations of discoveries ahead and solutions to hitherto insolvable problems coming as a sudden insight.