Compare Jung's definition of the extraverted intuition type (1921): "The (extraverted) intuitive is never to be found in the world of accepted reality-values, but he has a keen nose for anything new and in the making. Because he is always seeking out new possibilities, stable conditions suffocate him. He seizes on new objects or situations with great intensity, sometimes with extraordinary enthusiasm, only to abandon them cold-bloodedly, without any compunction and apparently without remembering them, as soon as their range is known and no further developments can be divined. So long as a new possibility is in the offing, the intuitive is bound to it with the shackles of fate. It is as though his whole life vanished in the new situation. ... (His) morality is governed neither by thinking nor by feeling; he has his own characteristic morality, which consists in a loyalty to his vision and in voluntary submission to its authority" (p. 368). These lines not only apply to Dorian, but also to Wilde. This does not mean that Dorian = Wilde, but it does suggest that Dorian is a symbolic representation of the author's unconscious ego (his dream-ego).
Last modified October 2002