Missing the Point — Used Properly the Myers-Briggs Plays an Important Role

I’m not normally given to writing book reviews, especially with regard to those that I don’t like. But The Personality Brokers: The Strange History Of Myers-Briggs And The Birth Of Personality Testing[i] demands it.

Yes, mother and daughter, Katherine Cook Briggs and Isabel Myers, were completely obsessed with the theories of Carl Jung, specifically his Psychological Types. And they were equally obsessed with producing an instrument that would not only assess, but quantitively measure the different Types. Nonetheless, by itself this is not damning.

The History of Science shows again and again that those associated with some of the most important findings and theories in Science were completely consumed by them. Indeed, my first book, The Subjective Side of Science: A Philosophical Investigation into the Psychology of the Apollo Moon Scientists[ii], showed in no uncertain terms that scientists had to persist in holding onto their theories in the face of disconfirming evidence lest they die a premature death. Indeed, the forty or scientists that I interviewed repeatedly over the course of the Apollo Moon missions constantly stressed that a scientist had to do everything in their power to prove their ideas Right. In exploring their portrait of the ”Ideal Scientist,” unlike those that are in…