In Part 1, I briefly hit on the genesis of personality theory from ancient Greece, up to the beginning of the 20th century with huge leaps of understanding provided by Carl Jung.
Unfortunately at the time, much of Jung’s work on the subject of personality type was being eclipsed by theories of Psychodynamics from people like Freud and Adler on one hand, or Behavioral Conditioning from people like Pavlov, Thorndike and Skinner on the other. These were simpler theories to understand, and presumably a little easier to design tests and experiments for. Consequently, a more utilitarian and simple “cause-effect” explanation for why we do what we do began to dominate our understanding.
ISABEL MYERS
Isabel Myers was raised by her mother, Katherine Briggs in Washington D.C.. Katherine was an intellectual woman who had a natural curiosity about understanding personality based on her own observations about her children’s behaviors. At one point she had attempted to design her own theories of personality before discovering Jung’s book “Psychological Types”. In that book she found much of what she had been looking for and began a correspondence with Jung directly.
Katherine had attempted to get Isabel interested in the theories but it was not until Isabel’s own children were mostly grown, and the outset of WWII that her interests in types would be fully realized. Looking for a way to help the war effort, she came across a “type sorter” that was designed to place people in the correct careers according to certain personality traits. Myers went to work using this instrument, but was disappointed when she realized that it was a poorly designed tool that did not at all predict success in whatever career it matched you with.
Enlisting her mother’s knowledge of Jung’s Psychological Types, Isabel Meyers set out to design a more valid and reliable instrument for assessing personality types and effectively matching them to career paths. The resulting instrument was the “Myers-Briggs Type Indicator”
The Myers-Briggs type Indicator (MBTI)
The MBTI is a questionnaire designed to assess the participant’s inclination towards one or the other side of each of the four of Jung’s personality scales.
The simple breakdown is as follows;
“E” - extroverted—————or—————“I” - introverted
“S” - sensory —————or—————”N” - intuitive
“T” - thinking —————or—————”F” - feeling
“J” - judging —————or—————”P” - perceiving
Based on the MBTI, you will be some combination of the above 8 letters, placing you in one of 16 “types” of personality.
For example;
If you score as more of an introvert (I) having a preference for what you can sense in the physical world (S), relying more on facts and data in making decisions (T) but always preferring to keep your options open (P), you would be an “ISTP” type.
Myers would then have some general observations about this particular personality type, and her observations are all very good. Myers spent years observing and assessing people around her. Her kids, local school children, volunteers from the colleges nearby, military personnel and to entire medical schools. Her collection of data was quite impressive and she was able to create some very accurate personality profiles.
So good were her assessments and observations, that her work has completely dominated the personality theory landscape since the 1970’s. Her contribution is undeniable, and inescapable.
No doubt, if you have any interest in this subject at all, you have taken the MBTI, or some variation of the MBTI on the internet someplace. It spat back at you some combination of four letters indicating type. “ENTJ” or “ISFP” and then you read a paragraph or two and thought “yeah, I can see that”. There might have been a link indicating to you what sort of career you would be happy with and what you tend to look for in relationships,hobbies and interests.
FUNCTION PAIRS
Myers would go on to suggest that each of her 16 types could be placed into one of four different groups based on what are called “Function Pairs”.
A function pair is the core of the personality type. It is the dominate functioning that influences all other functions of a personality. Revisiting the scales above;
“E” - extroverted—————or—————“I” - introverted
“S” - sensory —————or—————”N” - intuitive
“T” - thinking —————or—————”F” - feeling
“J” - judging —————or—————”P” - perceiving
The “Function Pairs” would be the unique combination of S vs N, or T vs F types.
So, for Myers, the four categories of type would be as follows;
ST, SF, NT and NF.
According to the Myers & Briggs Foundation, the function pairs work like this;
ST Pairing
“STs tend to approach life and work in an objective and analytical manner, and like to focus on realities and practical applications in their work. They are often found in careers that require a technical approach to things, ideas, or people, and tend to be less interested in careers that require nurturing of others or attending to their growth and development. STs are often found in business, management, banking, applied sciences, construction, production, police, and the military”.
SF Pairing
“SFs tend to approach life and work in a warm people-oriented manner, liking to focus on realities and hands-on careers. They are often found in human services and in careers that require a sympathetic approach to people. They tend to be less interested in careers that require an analytical and impersonal approach to information and ideas. SFs are often found in the clergy, teaching, health care, child care, sales and office work, and personal services.”
NT Pairing
“NTs tend to approach life and work in a logical and objective manner, and like to make use of their ingenuity to focus on possibilities, particularly possibilities that have a technical application. They are often found in careers that require an impersonal and analytical approach to ideas, information and people, and they tend to be less interested in careers that require a warm, sympathetic, and hands-on approach to helping people. NTs are often found in the sciences, law, computers, the arts, engineering, management, and technical work.”
NF Pairing
“NFs tend to approach life and work in a warm and enthusiastic manner, and like to focus on ideas and possibilities, particularly “possibilities for people.” They are often found in careers that require communication skills, a focus on the abstract, and an understanding of others. They tend to be less interested in careers that require an impersonal or technical approach to things and factual data. NFs are often found in the arts, the clergy, counseling and psychology, writing, education, research, and health care.”
Surely we know people who fit in to one of the four categories above, and we have observed these function pairs in action in those people. It all looks nice and neat and very similar to Jung’s own observations in Part 1 of this post.
My treatment of Myers’ work here is admittedly brief and leaves out a lot of really great information that you may find useful in your own study and application. There are many discussions about or under developed traits when your dominate pairing is NT, for example, and what sort of functioning we turn to against our nature in times of stress, etc. these are all very worthwhile observations and I recommend pursuing that information if that interests you.
Having said all of that, this is where we part ways with Myers, and leave behind a large part of her system in favor of something else. enter, David Keirsey.
DAVID KEIRSEY
David Keirsey was a Clinical Psychologist who spent decades working in school systems and with troubled and delinquent youth. He writes about his introduction to the MBTI in his book “Please understand Me II” after having read his own personality profile upon his completion of the MBTI;
“Here I was, only five years out of graduate school, working as a corrective interventionist for schools trying very hard to make myself useful to school children and their parents and teachers and administrators, these people having all sorts of difficulties getting along with eachother. and along comes a little old lady from Princeton New Jersey, Isabel Myers, to tell me about myself, about who I was and what I was good for. Oh, I already knew some of that stuff about myself, but I didnt know that I was a kind or type of person, and that therefor had to be others just like me”
Keirsey would go on to say that his exposure to Myers’ work got him into the habit of “typewatching” and making many of his own observations.
Perhaps the most crucial distinction that Keirsey made was in his treatment of the four types. He says;
“I soon found it convenient and useful to partition Myers’ sixteen types into four groups, which she herself suggested in saying that all four of what she referred to as the “NFs” were alike in many ways and that all four of the “NTs” were alike in many ways — although what she called the “STs” seemed to me to have very little in common, just as the “SFs” had little in common”
Citing many of his own influences in earlier studies of character and personality types, Keirsey ultimately determined that Myers had her four categories wrong.
She was right about the “NT” and “NF” types, but the “S” types tracked differently when it came to “function pairs” (Keirsey never spoke of function pairs the way Myers does, and is included here simply for comparison)
For Keirsey, the pairing should look like this;
NT, NF, SP and SJ.
The variations of behaviors between “ST” types proved to great for them to cleanly fit into a single category of “type”. This was also true of “SF” types, being so different in their behaviors. When Keirsey changed the grouping, he said that “typewatching became much easier”.
Now he was able to clearly observe SP types independent of their SJ cousins, despite their common “T” function dominance.
This minor tweak by Keirsey has, in my opinion, made a massive difference in the accessibility of this theory. While Myers did a great job in making Jung’s ideas digestible and tangible, even measurable, her categorization of function pairs is like trying to paint a picture assuming that the primary colors are Red, Yellow and Purple. It never quite gets you to where you’re looking, and is, frankly, the reason so many people reject the MBTI and typology generally today. The basic assumptions about type don’t *quite* line up in all cases. Useful? absolutely. Can it be improved on? Yes, and it must be.
KEIRSEY’S TYPES
If Keirsey had “functional pairs” they are his temperament types.
Utilizing Myers’ type lettering system (presumably to help people recognize the nature of his theories) Keirsey added his own labels to his types.
They are;
NT = “Rational”
NF = “Idealist”
SP = “Artisan”
SJ = “Guardian”
Thus, Keirsey’s four groupings are Rational, Idealist, Artisan and Guardian.
Each of these four types are uniquely distinct from each other in a whole host of ways that Keirsey spent several decades observing and trying to share with us. It is unfortunate in my mind, that his ideas did not gain nearly the kind of attention that they should have. I believe his system is even more accessible than Myers’ and delves into some things that the MBTI claims to address, but never does so adequately in my mind, in large part due to its being bound to incorrect “functional pairs”.
MECHANICS OF PERSONALITY
This more or less brings us to where we are today. Over the last 20 years I have completely devoured Keirsey’s work. And similarly to Kerisey’s treatment of Myers’ work, I have sought application of Keirsey’s work in my own career. As a Juvenile Corrections Officer, a Juvenile Probation Officer, and as a Licensed Professional Counselor, I have been constantly applying what I have learned about personality and psychological types, making my own observations given specific settings, and adapting and tweaking the theories of Keirsey along the way.
I’m confident at this point in saying that what I have to offer is unique, based on this natural evolution. That while I borrow heavily from Keirsey and other behavioral theorists, the application of these theories in my personal and professional life have led me to conclusions that go beyond the scope of any of their original works.
And this is how it should be with theory.
Freud and Adler inspired Jung, Jung inspired Myers, Myers inspired Keirsey, and Keirsey has had a profound impact on me.
In future posts, I will be sure to differentiate between what I am borrowing directly from Keirsey, and what are more original thoughts relating to type, temperament and character.
I hope you’ll stick around!