Appreciating Differences - Jack Falt - Ottawa area, Ontario, Canada

Return to Home Page

List of Articles by Jack Falt

Book Review by Jack Falt

Baron, Renee, The Four Temperaments: A Fun and Practical Guide to Understanding Yourself and the People in Your Life, New York, NY: St. Martin’s Griffin, 2004, ISBN 0-312-31578-3, 127 pp, appendix, resources.

Renee Baron is one of those authors that can take the essentials of a topic and present it in a very simple and readable format. She is also equally at home with Jung/Myers theory and the Enneagram. She has written books on both topics and likes to relate one to the other. This book is no exception as there is an appendix correlating Temperaments to the Enneagram. Each of the nine Enneagram Types is given a short description, and then describes how each ennea-type relates to the four temperaments.

Another characteristic of Barons books is that they have lots of simple line drawing cartoons to illustrate the various points being described. There are some cartoons in this booklet but they are not as prolific as they are in her other books.

The book begins with a brief history of temperament. Then there is a short questionnaire readers can take to help them determine their own temperaments. Rather than the rank ordering used by Personality Dimensions®, there are 20 questions to rate for each temperament.

A chapter is devoted to each of the four temperaments: Security Seekers (Gold - SJ), Experience Seekers ( Orange - SP), Knowledge Seekers (Green - NT), and Ideal Seekers (Blue - NF). The chapters describe each temperament in general terms and then in terms of relationships, communication styles, as parents, as children and teens, careers, leisure, what’s hard about being each temperament, peeves, what others admire, what others find challenging, things the temperament would never dream of doing, how to get along with each temperament, practical suggestions for each temperament in terms of personal growth and self-development, relationships, and a short list of famous people having that temperament.

This book is an excellent book to be recommended to temperament workshop participants as a followup. I would also recommend it to temperament facilitators as it will help round out your overall understanding of each temperament.

Return to Home Page

List of Articles by Jack Falt