MBTI/Keirsey Types

And the think­ing styles thing led me to think­ing about MBTI/Keirsey types again.

Actu­al­ly, one of my class assign­ments due next week is to take a type sort­ing test and write a memo about my results. So I picked up my copy of Please Under­stand Me II and was brows­ing through it.

When I took the real MBTI as admin­is­tered by an offi­cial autho­rized per­son many years ago, I came out as an XXXX—in between the two extremes of every axis. For a few years there I test­ed as XNFP, bal­anced between the intro­vert and extro­vert sides but always an Ide­al­ist. I was part­nered with ISTJs dur­ing those years, which did­n’t seem sig­nif­i­cant until after Sam (ENFP, always) and I came togeth­er and I took a test again—and was an ISTJ, to my vast sur­prise. Dur­ing the last few years, my scores vary between ISTJ and INFP—pretty much always intro­vert­ed. A Guardian-Inspec­tor or an Ide­al­ist-Heal­er. Occa­sion­al­ly I come out as an Ide­al­ist-Coun­selor.

Read­ing some of the book, I find that Keirsey says:

If you have an X in your type label you should read the two por­traits indi­cat­ed, and choose the one more like you. For exam­ple, if you type label was ESXJ, then read­ing both the ESTJ and ESFJ por­traits may help you choose one or the oth­er as more like you. Or per­haps your type label was XNFP. Here again read­ing both INFP and ENFP por­traits may help you decide which type seems more like you… How­ev­er, if an X appears in the S‑N scale (or even if the two scores are near­ly equal) it is advis­able to dis­re­gard the Tem­pera­ment Sorter and turn to the Keirsey Four­Types Sorter on page 348.

So I went to the Four­Types Sorter like a good girl. And I am absolute­ly inca­pable of choos­ing one answer for any of the ques­tions. Not at all. Seri­ous­ly. I can­not do it. For­tu­nate­ly, you don’t have to, which I under­stood when I actu­al­ly read the directions.

But I tied any­way, between Ide­al­ist and Guardian. Should­n’t a tiebreak­er test be set up so that you can’t do that?

(I had­n’t pre­vi­ous­ly noticed the rabid anti-med­ica­tion arti­cles on Keirsey’s site—wow. I def­i­nite­ly don’t want to be seen as endors­ing the site in gen­er­al, okay?)