Myers-Briggs Type Indicator® Assessment.

Some psychological ideas are useful because they give us a different language for something we already recognise in ourselves.

Psychological type has been one of those ideas for me.

The theory originates in the work of Carl Jung, who explored differences in the ways people orient themselves towards the world, take in information and make judgements. His ideas were later developed by Katharine Briggs and Isabel Briggs Myers into what became the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator®, or MBTI®.

I first approached Myers-Briggs with some scepticism. I assumed it would be another personality quiz telling me what sort of person I was supposed to be.

Instead, some of what I read gave language to things I'd recognised in myself for years but hadn't thought about particularly clearly.

That interested me.

Not because four letters suddenly explained who I was, but because they gave me something to question.

Type as a starting point, not an answer

This distinction matters.

I don't believe a personality type can tell you who you are.

Human beings don't fit neatly into sixteen boxes, and I wouldn't use a type result to explain someone's behaviour, determine what they're capable of or make decisions about what they should do with their life.

The official MBTI itself describes personality preferences rather than performance or aptitude, and explicitly says it cannot predict things such as job performance or identify someone's perfect partner.

Where I think psychological type can become interesting is as a prompt for reflection.

You might recognise that you need considerably more time alone than you've allowed yourself. Perhaps you tend towards analysis when something emotional becomes uncomfortable. You might notice that uncertainty energises you while somebody close to you desperately wants a plan.

The interesting part isn't deciding which category is correct.

It's asking:

Does recognising this help me understand anything about myself?

Why this can become interesting in midlife

By midlife, most of us have spent decades adapting.

Work, relationships, parenthood, expectations and necessity all influence the person we have learned to become. Some adaptations fit us extremely well. Others may have required us to rely heavily on particular parts of ourselves while giving very little room to others.

Psychological type can sometimes give us another way of thinking about that.

Not:

“I'm an introvert, therefore I can't do this.”

But perhaps:

“I've spent twenty years in an environment requiring me to operate in a way I find exhausting. What has that cost me?”

That's a very different conversation.

And it's much closer to how I use these ideas at Wolf Path.

The connection with Jung

I'm particularly interested in psychological type because of its connection with the wider Jungian ideas that influence my work.

The official MBTI framework grew from Jung's theory of psychological types, with Briggs and Myers developing his ideas into the four preference pairs used by the assessment.

For me, however, identifying a type isn't the destination.

It might simply give us another route into questions about how you've adapted, what comes naturally, what requires effort, and whether there are aspects of yourself that have had relatively little room to develop.

That's where a fairly simple personality framework can sometimes open into a much more interesting psychological conversation.

If you'd like to explore your type

There are online questionnaires that use the familiar personality-type framework and can provide an accessible introduction to these ideas.

I treat the result as something to think about rather than something to believe.

You may read it and recognise yourself immediately. You may agree with half of it and reject the rest. You might even find the result completely unhelpful.

All of those responses can be interesting.

If something does resonate, we can explore why it resonates rather than simply accepting the label.

Because knowing yourself isn't about discovering the correct four letters.

It's about becoming curious about the person those letters are attempting to describe.

EXPLORE YOUR PERSONALITY TYPE (link to external website)