What Must Peter Understand About Briggs and Buis to Prepare for His Meeting and Deal With Them?
How is it that the world'south nearly popular personality test could have been created by two women who had no formal grooming in psychology, statistics, or psychometrics? The story of the Myers-Briggs Blazon Indicator®, its creation, and its rise to popularity is a remarkable one, and a testament to the determination of its creators: Isabel Briggs Myers and her mother, Katharine Cook Briggs.
Katharine and Isabel lived in an era when women were not encouraged to develop their minds, and a traditional career path for a woman was almost out of the question. They were devoted wives and mothers, but they were also highly intelligent, independent, and curious women who needed an intellectual outlet. When they weren't tending their homes and families, they read, wrote, and studied a broad variety of topics, including the subject that would eventually brand them famous: the theory of personality types. Although Katharine and Isabel sometimes struggled to have their work taken seriously–whether because of their gender or their lack of formal credentials–their theories of personality type take come to define the fashion we remember well-nigh people and the differences betwixt them.
The Birth of a Theory
The family unit's interest in personality type began with Katharine Briggs, an educated and intellectual woman who had a lifelong love thing with knowledge. Katharine came of age in the Victorian era, when it was believed that too much education could damage a woman'southward reproductive capability. Fortunately for bookish Katharine, she came from a family of academics who believed in the value of education for women and men akin. She earned a degree in agriculture and worked as a teacher, and after college married a physicist, Lyman Briggs.
Katharine Cook Briggs
Katharine was an avid reader and author. Ane room of her abode was designated her study, where she wrote articles and essays on child-rearing and education. As she cared for her but daughter, Isabel, she formulated potent opinions on the proper methods for raising children. She believed children were innately curious and that pedagogy should foster their natural instinct to learn. After a brief and unsatisfying encounter with traditional schooling, she brought Isabel habitation to brainwash her daughter herself, and encouraged her to spend long hours reading and writing on whatever topics interested her.
Katharine was too an aspiring fiction author, and this is where her interest in personality types was born. She wanted to discover the fundamentals of personality and behavior, and so that she might create improve characters for her stories. Katharine's interest in personality types intensified when Isabel entered college and met the homo she would marry, Clarence "Master" Myers. Katharine felt that Chief was different from the rest of the family, and turned to her study of personality types in an attempt to quantify what that difference might exist. This was a crucial endeavor for Katharine, as she sensed that her power to appreciate Chief was essential to her continued closeness with her daughter. Rather than approximate or reject Chief, she fix out to understand him.
Dr. Carl Jung
Katharine's search for a definitive theory of personality type continued over many years, and led her to written report the works of philosophers, psychologists, and scientists. She found no unifying theory of type in her studies, and eventually she began to formulate her own. However, in 1923, she read C.G. Jung'south Psychological Types and establish the system she was looking for. The text described personality type in a mode that she institute definitive and complete, and she abandoned her ain attempts at creating a theory of personality in favor of studying Jung'due south work.
Katharine contacted Dr. Jung personally, corresponding with him over several years and even meeting him when he visited the United States. He provided her with additional notes on his piece of work in the field, and she consulted with him in the awarding of his theories. At the aforementioned fourth dimension, she began to use Jung'south theories in her writing. She composed a novel incorporating the concepts of personality blazon, and wrote an article for the New Commonwealth magazine which explained to readers how they might attempt to classify themselves and the people around them.
While Katharine pursued her studies, Isabel was keeping busy as a wife and mother. She and her husband Chief had two children, and Isabel plunged herself enthusiastically into the task of raising them well. What fourth dimension she had left over was occupied with her ain interest in writing. After winning a mystery-novel contest, Isabel enjoyed some success every bit a author of novels, short stories, and plays. During these years, Katharine tried to interest Isabel in type theory, without much success.
Isabel'due south Indicator
Things began to shift in the early 1940's, every bit Isabel's children grew older. She felt compelled to help with the state of war endeavour, but the usual volunteer activities did not challenge her intellect. Her search for a meaningful contribution took a turn when she read a magazine commodity describing the Humm-Wadsworth Temperament Calibration, a psychological test designed to identify people in the advisable type of piece of work for their character. She wrote excitedly to her mother, expressing her desire to become involved in the chore of allocating workers to the right niche within the labor force.
Isabel Briggs Myers
Isabel sought out a position within a personnel section which was already using the Humm-Wadsworth on their staff. She learned to score it and gathered empirical data on its effectiveness, but was disappointed when her information showed that the instrument was not a useful predictor of job performance. She discussed the problem with her female parent Katharine, who proposed an alternative: to develop a new cess, based on the theories of personality type that she had been studying for so many years.
With her children now in college, Isabel threw herself into the project of creating this "people-sorting" tool. Her female parent contributed the enormous amount of cognition she had amassed over decades of study, and Isabel went to work creating a questionnaire that could effectively sort people into personality types. Isabel wrote hundreds of questions, testing and re-testing them with people she knew and meticulously collecting data. Eventually, she selected 172 questions which she adamant were the near effective at sorting people into personality types. These composed Form A of the Myers Briggs Type Indicator.
Isabel was resourceful in finding republic of guinea pigs for her new tool. She gave the Indicator to her son'due south high school class, to students at nearby colleges, and to the military units of family friends. In 1945, she signed a contract with a management consultant to utilize the Indicator with his clients. Her big break, however, came nigh with the assistance of her begetter. Through his contacts in academia, he arranged to have the MBTI administered to the entering classes of the medical school at George Washington University. Isabel used this work as a springboard to sign on more medical schools, and over the side by side few years she was able to give the Indicator to several thousand medical students.
Equally Isabel immersed herself in the development of the Indicator, Katharine became less involved. She didn't understand the statistical methods Isabel was using to validate the instrument, and even suggested her name be left out of the title (Isabel refused). Katharine'due south work had provided the theoretical basis for the musical instrument, but the MBTI was very clearly Isabel's. Katharine contributed where she could, in particular providing much-needed funding, while Isabel pressed alee with her enquiry.
The MBTI Finds a Publisher
The large trunk of data Isabel gathered from her work with medical colleges allowed her to further refine the instrument. It also gave her the opportunity to gain more than recognition. In 1956, a dean of one of the medical colleges she was working with met with the head of the Educational Testing Service, a publisher of psychometric assessments, and suggested that the visitor might be interested in the Indicator. Researchers at ETS invited Isabel to present the instrument and were impressed. In 1957, ETS signed a contract with Isabel to publish the MBTI.
The contract with ETS offered Isabel more resources, but also more frustration. She was assigned to work with a team of researchers and statisticians who were suspicious–and sometimes outright derisive–of her unconventional background and methods. Although Isabel made important gains in her data collection while at ETS, the company never publicized the instrument, and Isabel grew increasingly dissatisfied with the way her creation was handled. In 1975, Isabel signed a new contract with Consulting Psychologists Press, a pocket-sized but well-respected company in California. CPP made the Indicator a cardinal focus of their catalog, and it grew to become their best selling production.
Gifts Differing
The Cover of Gifts Differing
Isabel's family and colleagues had been imploring her for years to write a book on her theories of personality, but the project had ever taken a backseat to her data collection and analysis. However, when she was diagnosed with cancer in the 1970's, she realized her time might exist running short. With the help of her son Peter, she wrote Gifts Differing, notwithstanding considered the definitive text on Myers-Briggs personality type. As her health worsened, she worked from her sickbed to edit and proofread the book. She died shortly after completing the book, peacefully in her home.
Although Isabel originally conceived the Indicator every bit a career-placement tool, it came to define how she thought nearly all aspects of life. She viewed it as of import tool in vocational planning, education, marriage, and personal relationships. She credited her own happy marriage to her sensation of personality types, explaining that the differences between herself (an INFP) and her husband (an ISTJ) were made easier to empathise and appreciate with the use of the MBTI. Type was a way of life for Isabel, and her family unit members reported that in her subsequently years she would talk of little else.
Isabel Myers' passion was to prove others their gifts, and help them empathise how they might best contribute to the earth around them. Her unflagging tenacity in promoting her Type Indicator was borne of her conviction that the tool could be of tremendous benefit to anyone who was given admission to information technology. At the last professional result of her life, she told a colleague of her hopes for the future: "I dream that long subsequently I am gone, my work will proceed helping people."
Myers Briggs Type Indicator and MBTI are registered trademarks of the Myers & Briggs Foundation, Inc.
Sources
- Katharine and Isabel: Mother'southward Low-cal, Daughter's Journey, by Frances Wright Saunders; Consulting Psychologists Press.
- Gifts Differing, past Isabel Briggs Myers with Peter B. Myers; Consulting Psychologists Printing.
- The Story of Isabel Briggs Myers. Retrieved from http://world wide web.capt.org/mbti-assessment/isabel-myers.htm.
Source: https://www.truity.com/myers-briggs/story-of-mbti-briggs-myers-biography
0 Response to "What Must Peter Understand About Briggs and Buis to Prepare for His Meeting and Deal With Them?"
ارسال یک نظر