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Originally Posted by Haphazard

QUOTED FOR TRUTH.

If you take life too seriously, you'll never get out alive.

MBTI is a pretty theory that can work sometimes but it often just doesn't hold water against things demonstrated through empirical and scientific testing. And even things demonstrated through testing won't hold true for everybody. Through study we find trends, not laws, especially in nonconcrete subjects like human psychology.

It may be pretty new-agey, but calling it a 'religion' is going a bit too far.

I really hope we're able to make the distinction between Jung's typology and MBTI.

They are not the same.

MBTI's goal is to make what Jung did available to the masses. Or rather I should say, those who employ it's powers use them for this reason. Because most people are stupid, and for the sake of empirical relevancy for those same customers, they had to simplify every last bit of what Jung did.

Additionally, it requires that the subject has studied himself intensely, a feat that's next to impossible given what introspective abilities we have as mammals.

Originally Posted by This sums up quite nicely what the system Jung designed is capable of

Even though it doesn't bother us to talk about types of roses or pine trees or human blood, there is something in the very idea of typing people that makes us feel uneasy. Types threaten us from two directions. First, we are afraid that they will pigeonhole us, deny our uniqueness, and replace it with a superficial label. Secondly, we feel they are somehow undemocratic and could lead to prejudice and repression.

Typology is the study of human differences. C.G. Jung's psychological types are not based on set descriptions that real people must be fit into, but on basic elements which, when combined together, can be used to describe the differences among people. A type is a group of characteristics that stands midway between the universal traits common to us all and those which are uniquely our own. For example, we all have eyes. Yet our own eyes are unlike anyone else's. But between these two poles there are groupings of blue-eyed people, brown-eyed people, etc. Types are a bridge between the universal and the particular. Every typology can be abused in order to deny the universal or the unique in man, but a good typology is a powerful aid to a deeper understanding of who we are.

One last thing -- I don't blame Meyers and Briggs for the regrettable reception their test ended up with. It's not their fault so few noticed that the I in MBTI stands for INDICATOR.