PLEASE j UNDERSTAND i ME. CHARACTER & TEMPERAMENT TYPES DAVID ! KEIRSEY MARILYN BATES DISTRIBUTED BY PROMETHEUS NEMESIS BOOK COMPANY Box 2748, Del Mar, CA 92014 858-509-7728 Copyright ©1984 Gnosology Books Ltd. Fifth Edition All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission In writing from the Copyright owner. Address all inquiries to the distributor. ISBN o-9606954-0-0 TABLE OF CONTENTS I. Different Drums and Different Drummers . 1 D. The Four Temperaments . 27 m. MatingandTemperament......................... 67 IV. TemperamentinChildren.......................... 97 V. TemperamentinLeading .......................... 129 Appendix: The Sixteen Types ENFJ ......................................... 167 INFJ......................................... 170 ENFP........................................ 173 INFP ......................................... 176 ENTJ ......................................... 178 INTJ......................................... 180 ENTP........................................ 183 INfP ......................................... 186 ESTJ......................................... 188 ISTJ......................................... 189 ESFJ......................................... 192 ISFJ . 194 ESTP ......................................... 196 ESFP ......................................... 198 ISTP......................................... 200 ISFP......................................... 203 Bibliography. 209 I DIFFERENT DRUMS AND DIFFERENT DRUMMERS If I do not want what you want, please try not to tell me that my want is wrong. Or if I believe other than you, at least pause before you correct my view. Or if my emotion is less than yours, or more, given the same circumstances, try not to ask me to feel more strongly or weakly. Or yet if I act, or fail to act, in the manner of your design for uction, let me be. I do not, for the moment at least, ask you to understand me. That will come only when you are willing to give up changing me into a copy of you. I may be your spouse, your parent, your offspring, your friend, nr your colleague. If you will allow me any of my own wants, or emotions, or beliefs, or actions, then you open yourself, so that some day these ways of mine might not seem so wrong, und might finally appear to you as right-for me. To put up with me is the first step to understanding me. Not that you ombrace my ways as right for you, but that you are no longer Irritated or disappointed with me for my seeming wayward­ ness. And in understanding me you might come to prize my dif­ ferences from you, and, far from seeking to change me, preserve and even nurture those differences. 1 2 Please Understand Me The point of this book is that people are different from each other, and that no amount of getting after them is going to change them. Nor is there any reason to change them, because the differences are probably good, not bad. People are different in fundamental ways. They want different things; they have different motives, purposes, aims, values, needs, drives, impulses, urges. Nothing is more fundamental than that. They believe differently: they think, cognize, con­ ceptualize, perceive, understand, comprehend, and cogitate differently. And of course, manners of acting and emoting, governed as they are by wants and beliefs, follow suit and differ radically among people. Differences abound and are not at all difficult to see, if one looks. And it is precisely these variations in behavior and at­ titude that trigger in each of us a common response: Seeing others around us differing from us, we conclude that these differences in individual behavior are but temporary manifes­ tations of madness, badness, stupidity, or sickness. In other words, we rather naturally account for variations in the be­ havior of others in terms of flaw and affliction. Our job, at least for those near us, would seem to be to correct these flaws. Our Pygmalion project, then, is to make all those near us just like us. Fortunately, this project is impossible. To sculpt the other into our own likeness fails before it begins. People can't change form no matter how much and in what manner we require them to. Form is inherent, ingrained, indelible. Ask a snake to swallow itself. Ask a person to change form-think or want differently-and you ask the impossible, for it is the thinking and wanting that is required to change the thinking and want­ ing. Form cannot be self-changing. Of course, some change is possible, but it is a twisting and distortion of underlying form. Remove the fangs of a lion and behold a toothless lion, not a domestic cat. Our attempts to change spouse, offspring, or others can result in change, but the result is a scar and not a transformation. The belief that people are fundamentally alike appears to be a twentieth century notion. Probably the idea is related to the growth of democracy in the Western world. If we are equals then we must be alike. Freud believed we are all driven from Different Drums and Different Drummers 3 within by Eros, and that what seem to be "higher" motives are merely disguised versions of Eros. His colleagues and fol­ lowers took issue with him, though most retained the idea of singular motivation. Adler saw us all seeking power (and later other things). Sullivan took up the later Adlerian theme and put social solidarity as the basic instinctual craving. Finally, the Existentialists-eg. Fromm-had us seeking after Self. Each appealed to instinct as purpose, and each made one instinct primary for everybody. In 1920 Jung disagreed. He said that people are different in fundamental ways even though they all have the same multi­ tude of instincts (archetypes) to drive them from within. One instinct is no more important than another. What is impor­ tant is our preference for how we "function." Our preference for a given "function" is characteristic, and so we may be "typed" by this preference. Thus Jung invented the "function types" or "psychological types." In 1907 Adickes said man is divided into four world views: dogmatic, agnostic, traditional and innovative. In 1920 Kretschmer said abnormal behavior was determined by the temperament similar to those of Adickes: hyperesthetic, anes­ thetic, melancholic and hypomanic. Thus some people are born too sensitive, some too insensitive, some too serious, some too excitable. Around 1920 Adler spoke similarly by pointing to four "mistaken goals" people of different make pursue when upset: recognition, power, service and revenge. Also in 1920 Spranger told of four human values that set people apart: religious, theoretic, economic and artistic. So the early twentieth century saw a brief revival of a view pre­ sented almost twenty five centuries earlier by Hippocrates, who, in trying to account for behavior, spoke of four tem­ peraments clearly corresponding to those of Adickes, Kretsch­ mer, Adler and Spranger: choleric, phlegmatic, melancholic and sanguine. By 1930 the views of Jung as well as those of Adickes, Kretschmer, Adler, Spranger and Hippocrates had all but been forgotten, replaced as they were by so called "dynamic" psychology on the one hand and "behaviorist" psychology on the other. Behavior was now to be explained as due to unconscious motives or to past experience or both. The idea of temperament was abandoned. 4 Please Understand Me A revival of the idea of temperament in the 1950s was acciden­ tal. Isabel Myers dusted off Jung's book on psychological types and with her mother Katheryn Briggs devised the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, a tool for identifying sixteen different patterns of action. The test was used so widely that it created interna­ tional interest in the idea of types of people and revived interest in Jung's theory of psychological types. But it also revived interest in the ancient theory of four temperaments because the sixteen Myers-Briggs types fell neatly into the four temperaments of Hippocrates, Adickes, Kretschmer, Spranger and Adler. Suppose it is so that people differ in temperament and that therefore their behavior is just as inborn as their body build. Then we do violence to others when we assume such differ­ ences to be flaws and afflictions. In this misunderstanding of others we also diminish our ability to predict what they will do. Likewise, we cannot even reward others should we want to, since what is reward to us is, very likely, a matter of indif­ ference to the other. To each his own, different strokes to different folks. To achieve the intent of these sayings will take a lot of work in coming to see our differences as something other than flaws. The payoff of such work is that you can look upon your spouse, for example, as a DIFFERENT person-someone you don't quite understand, but someone you can, with a sense of puzzle­ ment perhaps, gradually come to appreciate. Similarly, you can gain an appreciation of your offspring, parent, superior, sub­ ordinate, colleague and friend. Much to gain, nothing to lose. But first it is necessary to study yourself. If you don't have yourself accurately portrayed, no way can you portray any­ one else accurately. The best way at present to do this is to take the _Myers-Briggs Type Indicator test. This can be done by attending a workshop on the Myers-Briggs types or by going to a counselor or psychologist who is authorized to administer this test. In the meantime it may help you to read this book with more personal involvement than otherwise to answer the questions on pages 5 through 10. An answer sheet is provided on page 11, with additional copies to be found in the back of the book. Decide on answer a or b and put a check mark in the proper column of the answer sheet. Scoring directions are provided at the bottom of page 11. There are no right or wrong answers since about half the population agrees with either answer you choose.