The new Manual for Form M now includes information about temperament -citing Dr. Linda V. Berens-as a valid part of typology. Dr. Berens was a student of Dr. David Keirsey, one of the main authors of Please Understand Me (1974). (In a previous issue of Tell~A~Type I did a book review of his Please Understand Me II.)
Dr. Berens set up Temperament Research Institute (TRI) as a company to provide Jung/Myers theory and Temperament training and consulting and publish and distribute related books and materials. Over the years, she has combined the use of temperament with Jung/Myers theory in her consulting work. Working Together is an excellent reference text with an extensive preamble. It begins with a number of examples of how temperament and psychological type were used to help change the interaction of management and turn the companies from mediocre performances to being highly functioning companies, improving worker moral, customer service and company profits. Now that the authors have you motivated, they move on to the history of the study of personality types, looking at the contribution of Carl Jung, Ernst Kretschmer (postulating a system of four dimension of human behaviour), Isabel Myers and her mother, Katherine Briggs, David Keirsey, who saw in Myers's work a similarity to the findings of Kretschmer, and Eduard Spranger. If all these names and their theories put you into overload, you are urged to skip to a more congenial section.
The next chapter looks at personality types. Most books look at the eight preferences and come up with the sixteen types, then subgroup the types into the four temperaments. This book begins with the four temperaments, acknowledging that each contains four types, and expands the four temperaments into the sixteen types. The four temperaments are: The Idealists (NFs), the Guardians (SJs), the Rationals (NTs), and the Artisans (SPs). These four temperaments can be placed in a two-by-two matrix. The two dimensions of the matrix look at how humans use words and tools. People use words in an abstract way (NF and NT), or concrete way(SJ and SP). When we look at how people use tools, we see that they use them cooperatively(NF and SJ), or pragmatically (NT and SP).
The temperaments are further subdivided into being "role directive" or"role informative." For example, the NFJs are role directive, while NFPs are role informative.Then we look at whether the individual is gregarious or Extraverted, or feels less comfortable with others or Introverted. This gives the four types of ENFJ, INFJ, ENFP and INFP. Similarly, the other three temperaments yield the remaining twelve types.
This is a unique and valuable way of looking at personality. It also helps in the process of determining "True Type." Dr. Berens has written about the problem in the APT Bulletin, and made several presentations at APT Conferences on how the old Form G had a number of ambiguous S-N questions that tended to bias Sensors being identified as Intuitives. This will be one of the important ideas Dr. Berens will explore at our November 1999 OAAPT Conference. The next chapter has a self-assessment checklist that has you choose from temperament statements about the way you behave and the way you talk about your work. Then there are the usual lists of words for each of the eight preferences. With this information you can then identify your personality type (with the caution that you need a professional to administer and interpret a proper instrument to obtain a valid result).
Now we come to the reference portion of the book. The first section
has a page for each of the sixteen types giving useful hints on how to
manage each type how to encourage, what frustrates them, how they can be
irritating to others, etc. If you are giving management training, this
book becomes a useful follow-up resource that managers can use to remind
themselves of some key ideas that may explain some of the interpersonal
problems their employees are having. The last two-thirds of the book
is an appendix. It has about fourteen additional pages for each type. It
presents the material in a split column format with descriptions on one
side and their implications on the other. Each type is described in eleven
categories: management style, values, attitude, skills, driving force,
energy direction, authority orientation, role perception, conflict resolution,
modes of learning, and blind spots and pitfalls.
With the advent of computer software Institute for Management Development ( the publisher of Working Together) has produced a program that will print parallel profiles of two people, such as a manager and an employee, or two employees. This makes comparisons more obvious and easier to see the similarities and the differences between the two. In the eleven years since this book was first published, Dr. Berens, through her research, has further refined her understanding of temperament and psychological type. Although much of her presentation to OAAPT will be covering an introduction to type and temperament, it will be done using The TRI Methodology(TM). Thus, this conference is one you can bring someone who is new to personalities theories, as well as adding greatly to your own knowledge of how type and temperament interrelate.
Dr. Berens has trained over 1,000 people to qualify for the Jung/Myers theory certification and has used this temperament material as an integral part of that program. She has developed a wide array of materials to help practitioners present type and temperament theory, including Understanding Yourself and Others(TM): An Introduction to Temperament and the newly released The Sixteen Personality Types: Descriptions for Self-Discovery. Visit her web site at http://www.tri.network.com to see the many programs and materials that TRI offers.
Understanding Yourself and Others and The TRI Methodology are trademarks of Temperament Research Institute