Book Review by Jack Falt, INFJ
The author gives a very thorough look at how introverts are perceived and then disproves many misconceptions about introverts. She also points to many famous people who were introverts and the great contribution they made to civilization.
She goes into considerable detail into the research done on brain mapping. It turns out that the signal to an introvert’s brain actually is a much longer path than it is for extraverts. That is why it takes longer for an introvert to come up with an answer to a question or to respond to a situation. It also means that in rerouting the brain signal, a lot more connections are made and usually the answer has a lot more depth. For the extravert the signal to the brain just touches the surface and then zips back out. Extraverts have to make an extra effort to do the deep thinking that introverts do more naturally.
The book looks at how introversion affects relationships, parenting, and what it is like to be an introverted child. It also describes how introversion affects our social and working lives. For those familiar with preferences there will not be a lot that surprises you. It may make you aware of how all-pervasive introversion is to a person’s life. The author is herself an introvert and married to an extraverted husband. She has a number of examples of how she and her husband react to life so differently. She is also a therapist and she has been able to use her insights with many of her clients.
The final part of her book is devoted to helpful suggestions to help introverts cope with living in an extraverted society.
There were two minor things that bothered me about this book. The author refers to a comment made by Kroeger in Type Talk (Tilden Press, 1988) that introverts only made up one-quarter of the population. (Kroeger also makes the same statement in his 10th anniversary edition.) I’m not sure where Kroeger got that figure as both the MBTI® Manuals (1985, 1998) show that extraversion-introversion is very close to fifty-fifty. A number of comments by the author indicate that being in a minority is an added cause for introverts not to see their value. With extraverts doing so much of the talking and being more noisy than introverts, it just may seem that introverts are outnumbered three to one.
The other concern was the author’s use of the word temperament to describe introversion. She seems familiar with the MBTI® instrument, but it made me wonder how knowledgeable she was about it. In most cases she is describing introversion in the same way as Jung/Myers uses the term but at other times she is using it in the way it is used on the street.
Even with these relatively minor flaws, the book is well worth reading and it has a great wealth of material to use.