One of the more persistent myths we live with is the belief that our feelings, those sudden hunches and quiet gut instincts, reliably hold the key to truth. We often imagine that intuition is the voice of wisdom, an inner oracle delivering unfiltered insight into life’s dilemmas. But the reality is more complex. Intuition may indeed be a profound guide — but it is also frequently mistaken, riddled with biases, and highly context-dependent. This tension is evident in the field of psychotherapy, where the nature of a client’s mind is examined with both logical rigour as well as positive regard.
What Notable Psychotherapists Have Said About Intuition
Roberto Assagioli, the founder of psychosynthesis, placed significant emphasis on intuition as a gateway to deeper self-knowledge and transformation. Unlike traditional psychoanalysis, which dwelled on the subconscious and past traumas, psychosynthesis looked towards the future, viewing intuition as a bridge between our rational mind and our deeper, transpersonal self. For Assagioli, intuition was not merely a mysterious, fleeting sensation; it was a faculty to be cultivated with as much seriousness as logic or reason. He spoke of intuition as "direct knowledge"— unmediated by analytical thought.
Carl Jung, like Assagioli, regarded intuition as an essential part of psychological life. In his typology of personality, he identified intuition as one of the four fundamental functions of consciousness, alongside thinking, feeling, and sensing. For Jung, intuition was not irrational but rather pre-rational — an unconscious ability to perceive patterns and symbolic meanings before they became fully articulated. Jung also connected intuition with the collective unconscious, that vast repository of archetypes and primordial wisdom. Intuition, in this sense, was a way of tapping into deeper, implicit knowledge that could illuminate personal and existential struggles.
Meanwhile, Sigmund Freud was considerably more sceptical of intuition. He believed that what we call intuition is often the disguised voice of the unconscious, a repository not of timeless wisdom but of repressed desires, unresolved conflicts, and hidden fears. The problem, Freud suggested, is when we mistake these impulses as truth.
More recently, cognitive-behavioural therapists have been wary of over-relying on intuition, given its susceptibility to distortion. Aaron Beck, the developer of cognitive therapy, focused on how automatic thoughts — often mistaken for intuitions — are frequently shaped by cognitive biases, reinforcing patterns of depression and anxiety.
Instinct vs. Intuition
I believe it is crucial to distinguish between instinct and intuition. Instinct is deeply biological: it is the innate programming that ensures survival. When a newborn seeks its mother’s breast or when we instinctively pull our hand away from a fire, we are responding to pre-wired, evolutionary imperatives.
Intuition, by contrast, is more subtle. It is a psychological and emotional process rather than a physiological one. Intuition operates as an unarticulated but deeply felt conviction about people, situations, or decisions. It may arise from experience, implicit learning, or unconscious pattern recognition.
While instinct belongs to the realm of primal survival, intuition belongs to the realm of meaning, insight, and subjective experience.
What Are Cognitive Biases?
The human brain, while remarkable, is not an impartial processor of information. Instead, it takes shortcuts, drawing conclusions based on incomplete or distorted information. While these mental shortcuts (or heuristics) are often useful, they can lead to false judgments.
Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, pioneers in cognitive psychology, demonstrated that what some people believe is intuition is often fallible precisely because it is shaped by these biases. Their research in behavioural economics and psychology revealed numerous ways in which perceived intuition can lead us astray. For example, cognitive biases are systematic errors in thinking that affect the way we perceive reality.
Some of the most common cognitive biases include:
- Confirmation Bias: Our tendency to seek out or interpret information in ways that confirm what we already believe.
- Availability Heuristic: Judging the probability of an event based on how easily we can recall similar instances.
- Hindsight Bias: The inclination to see past events as having been predictable after they have occurred.
- Overconfidence Bias: The tendency to overestimate the accuracy of our own beliefs and judgments.
How Cognitive Biases Can Affect Intuition
If intuition is, at least in part, a function of unconscious pattern recognition, then it is inevitably susceptible to cognitive biases. When we feel we "just know" something, we may in fact be experiencing the effects of ingrained heuristics rather than genuine insight. Our perceived intuitions maybe shaped by past experiences, social conditioning, and emotional states, rather than by any transpersonal truth.
For example, someone who has been unlucky in relationships may intuitively feel that a promising new partner is bound to betray them. In cases such as this, I would suggest that intuition is not the voice of wisdom, but may well be the echo of past wounds. Many disastrous decisions have been made on the misplaced basis of intuition. Investors lose fortunes following their "gut feelings" about the stock market. Police officers have wrongly arrested suspects based on "hunches". When unchecked, intuition can lead to severe misjudgements with real-world consequences.
When Can Intuition Be Trusted?
Despite these concerns, intuition is not entirely unreliable. In fact, intuition can be remarkably accurate in specific circumstances:
- When it is Informed by Expertise – Research such as by psychologist Gary Klein showed how professionals such as health workers, police officers, firefighters, and elite athletes cultivate intuitive abilities over their careers. This demonstrates that experts in a given field develop highly refined intuition through years of experience. A seasoned chess player can intuitively recognize the best move because their unconscious mind has absorbed countless patterns of play.
- When it is Used in Combination with Reason – Intuition should not replace rational thought but rather complement it. The best decisions are often made when intuitive insights are tested with logic and evidence.
- When it is Unclouded by Strong Emotion – Intuition is more trustworthy when it is not shaped by fear, anger, or deep-seated biases. A calm and reflective mind is more likely to produce accurate intuitive judgments.
- When it is Consistent Over Time – A fleeting gut feeling is different from a persistent, deep-seated intuition that can be evidenced as true when scrutinised.
Intuition is a paradoxical guide: sometimes profound, sometimes misleading. In psychotherapy, as in life, the challenge is not to dismiss intuition but help clients to refine it — to distinguish between purposefully tested, deep insight and disguised bias. When working with a client, my invitation would be for them to look at their intuition and how it impacts their decision-making. When trained through experience, tempered by reason, and checked against reality, intuition can be trusted. But when left unchecked, it can be one of the greatest illusions of all.