Individual Development, EQ, Jung, Pearman Personality Integrator

Engaging. Informative. Speculative. Illuminating. Irritating. Thoughtful. Mistaken. These terms describe  Merve Emre’s new book, The Personality Brokers (in the US) and What’s Your Type? (in Australia and Europe), published by Doubleday.  Emre brilliantly used sources in multiple places to support her historical rendering of the family environment and passions of the mother-daughter duo who are responsible for the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator® assessment.  She managed to expose a host of attitudes, reflective of the time, and of the unique character of the individuals involved.   Emre’s real goal, however, is to use the popularity of the MBTI® tool to expose issues in the use of psychological tools in organizations.  She is right to point out that using personality based tools for selection and promotion is problematic and typically doesn’t end well for the individual or the organization.  Noting that individuals are being improperly evaluated from a s...

Personality Research Matters and How You Can Help My Time magazine arrived today and on page 8 the heading asks, “Who are you?”  The short piece is a summary of recent research on personality.  Arriving at my door, the article serves as a kind of cornerstone moment in a week when fifty colleagues sent me links from different newspapers reporting the same research finding: there are four personality types.  And this is on top of two weeks of a cascade of articles and emails on a new book about the history and use of the MBTI.  This entry is for all of my friends and colleagues who follow the personality research and publication saga that I’ve been part of for the last 40 years.   First, I will soon post a review of the new book, The Personality Brokers. I’m still checking some facts and leads before I respond to that book. Second, and the primary reason for this note is that a new research report that has been widely published about claims that “scienti...