Does anyone have any good sources?
Try these descriptions and tell me if it sounds good to you:
INTP Personal Growth
http://www.geocities.com/lifexplore/intp.htm(skip the "fluff" at the end, you'll know where it is.)
INTP - Jung Type Descriptions
INTP - On A Team
Thanks. I'll go browse that lot when I get chance. It's somehow more interesting to me to watch out for the flaws than to pat myself on the back for my strengths.
So I'm not the only one who thought that the kersey temperament was BS and seemed very fluffy ?
I went on the personal growth part and in my opinion that's where it all starts to make sense.
I got a feeling that you probably already read all these descriptions though.
I've never read into kersey myself but yeah the self help bits are usually more revealing to me than all the strength analysis in the world. I think I see flaws easier than I do strengths.
You mean to say that you don't get enough working examples of the dark sides of different personality types around here?
That's psychosis not psychometry
It's an inevitable consequence of what Christopher Lasch termed "The Culture of Narcissism"; where essentially self-esteem and "feeling good" about yourself are among the most important concepts promoted.
Of course the problem is that one never really gets a full honest picture of themselves, and ironically it leads to more anxiety and depression. It means accepting the person you want to be, rather than accepting the person you really are.
Precisely. Ignorance is only bliss if your brain doesn't keep trying to become aware.
That's the standard angle, Xander. Have you noticed they're in the Self-Help section, and not the Psychology section? I have.
They want to sell to laypeople, not professionals, and they'll get farther with complimentary individualization than derogation.
It does appear that most of the writing is more inclined towards being happy where you are and recognising that "you're cool too" than actually improving your lot.
Was That Really Me? by Naomi Quenk is about eruptions of the inferior.
Lots of teh coaching books like Differentiated Coaching and Introduction to Type and Coaching have information on common flaws
Working Together by Isachsen and Behrens points out all kinds of flaws
Sundial by Brydans is all about type and disease
Three Keys to Self-Understanding by Wyman weds the Enneagram with type to show how people can learn to take control of their lives,
SoulTypes by Hirsh and Kise is mainly on spirituality but has stuff on how each type spirals out of control.
Jung's Psychological Types probably has the most negative info since he derived it via working with people who weren't mentally healthy.
There's also the little fact that type is about normal differences among normal people, and every single type can be arrogant/stubborn/bossy/insecure/etc. depending on nurture/roles/difficulties. Because it's used so much with teams a lot of the resources were developed in keeping with the idea that giving people ammunition to tear each other down is generally not helpful...
I'm definitely hunting down that Wyman book. I've often wondered about a holistic theory including both the enneagram and the MBTI. Do they include positive and negative feedback too?
As for providing ammo, I think that people need to quit the nanny approach. I very much doubt that nuclear physics books are riddled with sidebars telling the reader that it's mean to nuke people for example. At some point the writer has to release responsibility for interpretation and use to the reader.
This is precisely what I noticed when I first was introduced to the Keirsey test, and then tried to compare both KTS and MBTI types to the FIRO-based APS temperament system I was familiar with. FIRO itself actually leans a bit towards the negative. (though for you; "People Gatherer-Matcher-Optimist" is positive; some of the other names are quite negative!) The APS and LaHaye temperament systems are quite balanced in strengths and weaknesses.
Then, everyone's trying to compare MBTI with Enneagram, which is the opposite negative extreme.
It was the Lifexplore page that gave me a good glimpse of the negative side, and that personalitypage site is good with that too,
That's what I found when looking into the enneagram. It's complete with warnings and possible areas for growth. The MBTI kinda brushes over all of that most of the time in the aim of making people feel better for being who they are.
Not so sure about the FIRO-B though. Surely if your need for inclusion is low, for example, then you really won't care that you will be labelled as someone who doesn't really care about being included unless your deluding yourself.
I had this same kind of feeling when reading Please Understand Me. He makes everybody sound so intelligent and healthy. I was thinking I should write a book called "Personalities of Stupid People"
That would be a book I'd read.