A Mindset Shift

Mindset is a disposition, an inclination, mentality, an ethos, or a point of view.  It is a useful term in that it allows for flexibility, variability, and stability in perspective.  The term gets used to say someone has a social, fear, business, dreamer, or growth “mindset.”  The term is intended to communicate a kind of “gestalt” in the way an individual approaches life.  Popular at the moment is the notion that a growth mindset is a perspective that we can learn and grow, that intelligence is malleable, and that openness to experience invites experiences that help us extend beyond our basic talents.  Feedback —in all its forms —is vital to a growth mindset. [1] The absence of a growth mindset is a fixed mindset (which may serve various purposes as well) which has the main downside of leading to what I call, “hardening of the categories.”

Carl Jung could have helped us tremendously if he had titled his initial work Psychological Mindsets rather than Psychological Types.  If you read his initial work closely, and the many letters (volumes of them) on the subject, he clearly wanted readers to understand that he was talking about mindsets, their persistence, how they operate, and why you should care.  It is easy to see why he railed against the use of psychological types as a personality framework with fixed labels; he was concerned with the fundamental mechanisms of perception and judgment.  He called his concepts metaphors intended to make complex processes accessible to the reader of his work.  

By extension, Myers would have been better served with the Myers-Briggs Mindset Indicator and avoided all the ridicule the tool has received as a “personality assessment.” [2] I sought to blend both the reality of demonstrated behavior (the purview of personality) and natural tendencies (the purview of Jung’s mindsets ) with the Pearman Personality Integrator. [3] It is easy to see that both are realities: our behavior is the outcome of complex variables and what we find natural and comfortable to do may not be useful or even desirable in certain contexts but is nonetheless the real place of comfort. Further, the ability to flex, to be agile, among psychological resources is vital to fulfillment and well-being, which is also embedded in my tool.

What was Jung’s point? Jung intentionally called his theory of PSYCHOLOGICAL TYPES because he was concerned with the primary psychological drivers of behavior, choice, and ways of being.  He was—as was Myers—clear that patterns in perception and judgment are pervasive in human choice and action.  In so far as that is true, we could argue that the outcomes of those patterns provide hints at personality patterns.  Jung wrote a separate book on personality with a dashing mention of psychological types.  He wrote repeatedly from 1921 to his death in 1961, that Psychological Types is about underlying dynamics and complexities in trying to understand perception and judgment, and how these are distorted by over-reliance on various psychological processes, and how to learn to use the energetic resources in the psychological systems.  Labels simply would not do for Jung.

Psychological types purport that an individual’s mind is tilted toward reality in specific ways and it takes a formidable effort to be inclusive of other perspectives and that you will always go to default mode.  A thinking type mindset can no more ignore the logic, principle, or object of a situation than a feeling type mindset can ignore the immediate awareness of the ‘is-ness” of other humans.  Consequently, thinking type mindsets objectify information such that it always leads to an issue of correctness, exactness, and best answer—a present example of this dialog as an illustration.  Feeling type mindsets immediately go to the issue of meaning and value such that it always leads to an action of harm avoidance and care.  This only gets turned off when we die.  This does not say we cannot learn to flex and enrich our view, as we clearly know we do.  It says that the mindset is of a psychological perspective tilts in a particular direction.  It so happens that these mindsets produce a range of behaviors, often in patterns, and often with great consistency, which we associate with the criteria of personality: persistence of behavior patterns across situations.   

For some, this may seem like a useless distinction.  I suggest it is a rather profound way of pondering and acting on measurement, prediction, and fundamental human natures. 

The practical importance of this distinction plays out in a number of ways.  First, the concept of mindset implies a comprehensive approach that is adjustable.  Second, the reality is that what we do, how we think, what we do in various situations, and how we learn to adapt make up the most interesting and healthy view of experience.  Third, we are invited into greater self-awareness and greater intentionality about how we need to address how we use our talents, develop other talents, and discern appropriate deployment of who we are.

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[1] Carol Dweck’s book on Mindset is a highly recommended read.  She has masterfully explored how mindset works in everyday life and what we should nurture to extend our growth mindset and avoid the pitfalls of a fixed mindset.

[2] Arguably one of the most used assessments in the developed world, the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator ® has an international following.  And because of its unconventionality compared with traditional psychology, it is the target of a good deal of criticism.  In every possible way, an assessment tool can be criticized, the MBTI® has received it and survived against all odds.

[3] The Pearman Personality Integrator®  allows an individual to look at his or her entire psychological system using Jung’s framing with the added consideration of how we are required to demonstrate certain behaviors in parallel with how comfortable it is to use those behaviors; the tool looks at how we flex in using our psychological resources.  The outcomes allow looking at strengths, energy vampires in our lives, and degrees of flexibility which may need to be enhanced. I firmly believe It is published by MHS, Inc of Toronto Canada.