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For example, business professionals have been divided into two types: a rational
type who conforms to tradition, has a possessive attitude that prohibits movement,
and uses a procedure-centred method, contrasted with an intuitive type who co-operates
with others, shares a concern for community, and employs a people-centred method.
This typology, where rational is contrasted with intuitive, is doubtless both inaccurate
and over-simplified. The basic point, however, is surely well-taken: success in
business requires input not only from the analysing end of the spectrum, but from
the synthesising end also. Or again, the value in business of systematically applying
tried and tested procedures does not negate the value of being capable of imaginative
innovation– on the contrary, each complements the other.
I am not proposing a form of ‘new age’ business practice where decisions are derived
solely from the examination of the entrails of goats newly slaughtered on the boardroom
table, or even from the interpretation of cards. There are people on the intuitive
side sufficiently angry to want to trash the rational faculty and all its works.
Personally, I am quite sure that redressing the bias against intuition does not
require the adoption of a bias against reason. Whether we are concerned with the
day-to-day decisions of business or of our daily lives, thinking things out, accumulating
relevant data, consulting sources of established expertise – all these have their
necessary place. If we are to use the cards, to call on the intuitive side for help,
we will hope that the results support the conclusions reached by reason, rather
than flying in the face of them.
Nevertheless, this is not the whole story. There is an area of psychic life where
reason cannot take us. If we realise the importance of that area, and if we believe
that no human enterprise can afford to ignore it, then we shall have to take account
of it. And we shall be forced to acknowledge that the access route we shall need
can come only from the intuitive side. I refer to the area of the unconscious
psyche.
To get some idea of the role which the cards may, indeed should play in decision
making and problem solving, we must learn something of the unconscious.
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