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

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Book Review by Jack Falt

Nash, Susan, Dating, Mating & Relating: The complete guide to finding and keeping your ideal partner, Oxford, UK: Pathways, 2000, ISBN - none, 208 pp

Susan Nash has written a very interesting and thorough book applying temperament, type and the eight cognitive functions to the world of relationships.

This would make an excellent textbook to develop a course for couples at various stages in their life together. In fact, after a major section on temperament and type, it is divided up into three sections of dating, mating and relating. It could be used for premarital courses, marriage enrichment and couple therapy.

Like her previous book, Turning Team Performance Inside Out, this one helps people get a clearer picture of their own personality. With temperament more accepted in Jung/Myers theory circles, more books are including it in the overall description of personality. This book begins with temperament and uses Keirsey’s terms of Playmate, Helpmate, Mindmate and Soulmate. The author provides a rank order quiz to help you determine your Lovemate temperament. There are charts showing the strengths and possible weaknesses of each temperament, and charts on what’s important for each temperament, and how each temperament will act as lovers. These are followed by a page and half description of each temperament.

Then the author moves onto Loving Styles. This combines the eight cognitive functions with the four temperaments. She begins this process by outlining how each of the four functions is divided into the cognitive functions. These are the introverted and extraverted forms of each of the four functions, although the terms are not used in the book. (The function designated in brackets are my interpretation of the terms.) Instead she uses the terms: experiencing (Se), recalling (Si), brainstorming (Ne), visioning (Ni), systematizing (Te), analysing (Ti), harmonizing (Fe) and valuing (Fi). There is a neat diagram showing how these eight cognitive functions would organize a wedding.

The four temperaments are combined with the eight functions in a chart to show the eight Loving styles. To help identify their functions, individuals are provided with questions to score. I wonder how easy these questions are to answer. I found them rather abstract and difficult to decide if the questions fit my personality or not. (The more I study Psychological Type the less sure I become about my own True Type.)

Next, extraversion and introversion are introduced and then combined with the eight Loving styles to produce the sixteen Loving styles and orientations. The sixteen are described in detail in the appendix. At no time are the preference letters used in the book. While this gets away from Psychological Type jargon, it is replaced with the jargon of the four new temperament names, the eight cognitive functions, and sixteen Loving styles. As a presenter, who might use this material, it means introducing quite a few new terms. The individual reading the book only needs to remember his or her temperament, two cognitive functions, and love style, and that of the partner.

To package the overall information the author provides us with an acronym TO FOCUS: Temperament, Operating style (loving styles), Functions, Ongoing development (type development over time), Communication pattern, Unique situation, and Stress response. Another useful acronym is given in the managing conflict chapter, PAUSE: P - recognize that there is a Problem, A - Address emotions: both yours and your partner’s, U - Understand each other’s positions, S - find Shared interest, and E - Explore options.

A unique feature of this book that is not in other temperament/Type related books is a chart outlining male and female differences. While John Gray’s Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus takes this to the extreme, there must be more to being men or women than interchangeable mental functions, and this book addresses some of them.

Now that we have the two partners’ personalities identified, there are a couple of charts that show how various temperaments connect with the four others, and also the way there is likely to be conflict between them. Then there are charts on how the ten information-gathering (perceiving) function combinations relate and similar charts for the decision-making (judging) function combinations.

By now the couple has quite a bit of data to use in understanding themselves and each other. The next step is to value similarities and differences. With this information as a background the couple can now look at the joys and pitfalls of the stages of dating, mating and relating.

In this review I have concentrated on the wealth of information on temperament, type and functions. This represents about one-third of the book. Other key areas are communication, dealing with conflict, and spending quality time together. Numerous case studies are given to illustrate the concepts. The quality time chapter is relatively free of type/temperament terms and is something all couples should consider.

The author has done a very thorough job describing her topic. I would very strongly recommend this book to the professional or a person experienced in temperament and type. I don’t know that it would be the first book I would recommend to couple as something they would likely read and come away with a great understanding of each other’s personalities without some guidance from someone more temperament/type knowledgeable. If they do invest the time working through the material they will be greatly rewarded.

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