A Study of Interior Monologue and Cognitive Functions in T. S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”

This study reinterprets T. S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” by engaging Carl Jung’s analytical psychology in conjunction with the MBTI cognitive function model as an interpretive framework, extending analysis beyond conventional modernist readings of social alienation and existential anxiety. While acknowledging that MBTI remains a contested and non-clinical model within personality psychology, this research employs its cognitive functions as an analytical vocabulary rather than a diagnostic typology. From this perspective, Prufrock’s interior monologue is explored in relation to tendencies associated with an INFJ functional alignment, focusing on the interaction of Introverted Intuition (Ni), Extraverted Feeling (Fe), Introverted Thinking (Ti), and Extraverted Sensing (Se). The analysis suggests that Ni structures symbolic temporal projection, Fe intensifies sensitivity to social evaluation, Ti mediates reflective self-scrutiny, and attenuated Se highlights the gap between abstract cognition and lived experience. By integrating cognitive-function discourse with close textual analysis, this study proposes a tentative interpretive framework for examining the psychodynamic organization of modernist poetic consciousness.