Monograph Review by Jack Falt
She begins by first looking at the skills level of the individuals. Sometimes people procrastinate because they haven’t mastered the skills needed to handle the complexity of a task. For students who have just come from the more structured atmosphere of high school, it is often assumed that they already have the skills needed to complete an assignment. Sometimes that is not the case and the counsellor needs to direct the student to the remedial help he or she needs.
Having gotten the skills issue out of the way, the rest of the monograph looks at how psychological type can offer some answers to the situation. Here type dynamics plays an important part. From her own work, the author looks at the various types in pairs based on the perceiving function and the orientation, i.e. INFP and INTP are grouped together rather than grouping INFP with ISFP and INTP with ISTP—the Myers pairings. She just finds that grouping them this way seems to work better when trying to explain the reasons for procrastinating.
The author emphasises that it is not just Perceivers who procrastinate. All types do to some extent, but she has had very few EJs come for help.
This is a monograph that could be given to clients once they understand their type and the basics of type dynamics. I have used this as a resource when I covered this topic in my ongoing group. We shared the kinds of things we tend to procrastinate on. (Yes, I too am guilty of procrastination!) Then we looked at how type might explain why it was happening, and then looked for specific type related remedies to overcome the problem. After working with this group of people for over four years, I can see that it has made a difference to them. One woman’s house is not quite as cluttered. She has made a concerted effort to organize the chaos Another man has been trying to organize his 10,000 e-mails that he so highly prizes, but I think he is in more need of activating his Destroyer archetype. It is perhaps beyond simple procrastination!
This is a very worthwhile addition to your library (if you can get around to actually ordering it). It has stood the test of time and is still available.