Personality Type
The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator
"I tried to treat them like me, and some of them weren't."
Coach Bill Russell
Around the middle of the twentieth century, Katharine Briggs and her daughter Isabel Briggs Myers made the insights and benefits of Jung's model accessible to laypeople by creating the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator®. This simple questionnaire-based tool allows anyone to explore the gifts and challenges of their own personality type. The MBTI® personality inventory has now been used effectively in career counseling, military officer and police training, curriculum design, psychological counseling, organizational development, and many other arenas for about 75 years. It is used by millions of people around the world every year; and is the most thoroughly scientifically validated assessment of normal personality in existence.
When we complete an MBTI questionnaire, our responses are interpreted in terms of a "reported type" preference. It is then up to each individual, with the help of their trained type professional, to either confirm that type as an accurate description of how they operate or to explore alternatives to arrive at their "true type."
When Katharine Briggs and Isabel Briggs Myers made the insights and benefits of Jung's model accessible to lay-people by creating the MBTI® assessment, they opened a doorway to a profoundly transformational learning and growth experience.
The sixteen possible types are expressed as four-letter "type codes." The first letter is either an E (for Extraversion) or an I (for Introversion) and describes the individual's primary "energy orientation." Are they most comfortable and energized when interacting with their surroundings or when focusing inward? The second letter is an S (Sensing) or an N (Intuiting) and identifies the person's preferred mode for taking in and processing information. Next comes either a T (Thinking) or an F (Feeling), which identifies their preferred way of making decisions. Finally, a P (Perception) or a J (Judgment) identifies their preferred approach to interacting with their environment: either through information-gathering or through decision-making. The internal dynamics of personality limit the ways that these elements can work and align within us, thus creating an array of sixteen possible basic personality types: ISTJ, ISFJ, INFJ, INTJ, ISTP, ISFP, INFP, INTP, ESTJ, ESFJ, ENFJ, ENTJ, ESTP, ESFP, ENFP, and ENTP.
In creating the MBTI instrument, Briggs and Myers distilled the essence of a complex psychological theory in order to put it to practical use on a broad scale. An unfortunate side-effect of their success is that most people, including some professional type practitioners, misunderstand the instrument—taking its easily understood surface-level insights to be all that it has to offer. In actuality, the initial feedback on our "reported type" can be a doorway to a profoundly transformational, ongoing learning and growth experience. It is important that one work with the right MBTI professional. Check their credentials and references and check to see that they are MBTI "Certified."