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?)
