After re-acquainting myself with Jung Typology again, I spent a bit of time taking a few more inventories, and looking over a few more resources for what the typology community thinks of INTJs.  I was surprised to find that there are a lot of good free resources out there, so reading material was not in short supply.

What was interesting to me, however, is that even with that breadth of reading material, the results often didn’t feel like much more than the kinds of answers a con-man might provide.

I think, in some ways, this is part of the trick of how typology and pretty much any other pop-culture personality type quiz gets sold to the public.  First, you quiz someone to find out how they think about themselves, asking questions to tune your final message.  Then, you feed back to them the attributes (with a positive spin) that they are most likely to identify with.  Finally, describe their strengths in such a way that they are something they can feel proud of, while their weaknesses are something that they can perceive as strengths in other circumstances.

What then is the value?

First and foremost, for me, it’s a lever to get my mind thinking in a different direction.  I don’t often think about my past as a compares to my present in the way I did in my last post.  Once I got to thinking about how my life has changed, I began to think about ways I could change in the future – and that has value to me.

When I think about the self-help or business-help books I’ve read, they have a very similar kind of positive feedback message.  In this case, it’s “your life will be better the more you understand your four letter code” when I really feel like it should be “your life will be better the more you understand yourself.”  Thought about that way, an MTBI is just one tool to help me understand myself, and while understanding the tool will help me wield it more effectively, it doesn’t directly make my life better.

But, I don’t throw out self-help books for claiming that their tool is the best at everything, instead, I use it as one of an ensemble of tools for my needs.

The other point that’s worth making through, is that personality tests have a flavor of social entertainment to them.  By reading about them, sharing them, and talking about them, you can learn about other people.  Not just by reading all about their results (which might tell you something – and not just that you’re stalking them), but also by listening to what they tell you about them – what do they say about their results?  What do they emphasize or blanks they fill in?  As someone who finds it difficult to talk about people, this social lubricant is quite valuable.

Overall, it’s been an interesting experience analyzing my MBTI results, and I’ve had fun writing about them!