Livre d'Or

staranise made a post recently which led me to get a bit more of a clue what's going on with MBTI types. In particular, I understood about MBTI dividing people into 16 "types" based on four pairs of preferences, but I never really got my head round the meaning of four special pairs within each type called "cognitive functions". And staranise explains it! Amazing!

( who doesn't love a good personality test? )

Some people cynically say that MBTI is just astrology for skeptics. I don't think it's method of fortune-telling, for sure, and I know it can be very much misused, such as in businesses where they make all their employees take a quiz and assume that once they've put people into one of 16 boxes then they know everything about them. Obviously people have other aspects to their personality beyond their MBTI type; you can't just divide the whole world into 16 groups. I also strongly disapprove of the kind of career counselling which tries to treat your MBTI as if it were your inescapable fate; I don't believe that there's any job that can't be done by people of any given type. Most jobs after all need a variety of different strengths and skills.

I think what MBTI and similar systems is most useful for is that it gives you a kind of shorthand way to explain what sort of person you are to others. Of course, if you want to have any sort of ongoing relationship, you want to add in other aspects of your personality, your life experiences, your background etc. But it gives a kind of starting point of, this is what to expect from this person, this is what they're likely to feel comfortable with, this is an area where they may have difficulties.