Chapter Two

In his chapter, we will flesh out the remaining parts of Jung's Theory of Typology.  Int he first part, we found that Jung discovered two basic dichotomies of personality. First, that people predominately existed in one of two worlds - the Introverted, or inner world, and the Extraverted, or exterior world.  Then he surmised that people used two basic functions in those worlds - one Perceived information, and one made Judgements ( or decisions) about said Perceptions.
But that was still not enough. Combining these two polarities only resulted in 4 poles, and Jung saw more than 4 distinct Types.  So he began two dissect the functions of P and J in a more granular way.
With Perception, he saw that people noticed data in two different ways. For some, it was the facts and figures of information - the actual, factual, real and recalled instances of a moment or scene, objects or memories - what was gathered by the 5(+) senses.  For others, it was the patterns, meaning, theories and hypothesis, in and around the same moments.  For the former, he labeled this Sensing.  For the latter, he labeled this iNtuition. (Why the N is capitalized we will explain later.)
On to Judgement, he noticed people made decisions based in two ways. 
Some used hard Logic, impartial analysis, cause and effect, and testing, both in the concrete and abstract, the what-if of hypothetical science. For this he labeled it Thinking (or T)
With others, he noticed that Values predominated the decision making process.  These could be internal values, the inalienable rights we see in the Bill of Rights, for example.  These values could be developed over a lifetime of experience and trial and error.  Other value sets could be attributed to societal mores and customs. Traditions passed down from a family, a village or the greater culture from which they were raised. Via empathy and sympathy, choices are made that conform to one 's consilience with harmony within or without.  For this decision making process he labeled it Feeling (or F).
[The etymology of the choice of the word Feeling is a small side discussion in  itself deserving of a post for another time. For now, please note that Feeling in this context does NOT mean emotions. It means Values.]
At this point, Jung had 3 dichotomies of 6 poles - I vs E, S vs N, and T vs. F. This is when his last aha for the basic theory took place.  Rather than PEOPLE being Introverted or Extraverted, he realized his other four functions were actually directional in nature. Sensing could be introverted, or Feeling would be Extraverted.
This results in 8 Functions with attitude (2 snaps and a circle).  Introverted and Extraverted Sensing (Si and Se for short), Introverted and Extraverted iNtuition (Ni and Ne - and here is why we use N for intuition, since Introverted already claims I); Introverted and Extraverted Thinking, (TI and Te), and lastly Introverted and Extraverted Feeling (Fi and FE).
Here is a simple outline of the 8 function attitudes:
Perceiving
(S) Sensing
(SI)
(Se)
(N)
(Ni)
(Ne)
Judgment
(T) Thinking
(Ti)
(Te)
(F) Feeling
(Fi)
(Fe)
So Jung had 8 Attitude-Functions.  And he knew that people preferred one of the 8 to orient, or anchor, their ego.  Jung perceived the ego to be the center of one's world view.  Picture a telescope that can hold one of 8 lenses as its primary lens, and that is how one can picture the ego.  It is not the self, but the glass through which we view the world.  But that leaves the other 7 FAs.  What to make of those.  Everyone possessed them, so what roles did they play in one's overall psyche?  Jung developed a hierarchy of perfeerences eventually for his model, but we won't go into it here.  For it's now that we wrap up this chapter and in the next chapter introduce our final architects, Briggs and Myers, who took Jungs nascent model and turned it into the full fledged instrument that we use today.

Part Four: Why Myers-Briggs for characters?

So welcome to Part Four of using the MBTI in writing.  No, you haven't had a brain fart.  Parts Two and Three I skipped for the time being, as they are very academic, and more background like Part One.  Part Two is about how the mother daughter team created the MBTI, and Part Three addresses criticisms of the MBTI.  Very dry stuff.  I'm three months overdue for a new chapter and wanted to get writing the juicy stuff.

So there can be  many reasons why you might want to use the MBTI in your writing.  The biggest reason is to get a handle on a character.  This could be a brand new character whom you have created,  a character handed to you Tabula Rasa with no previous publishing history, or a long time published character (like the Big Three of Batman, Superman or Wonder Woman). 

While the Big Three have such a long history, that they could fit any of the 16 Types, {depending on what period of history we are talking), most characters are not as broadly defined.  A character could have had some backstory added to them that fundamentally changed who we perceived them as being.  Or they could have been retconned or relaunched.  But most of the time, they have a few core characteristics they have exhibited over their history that allows us frame their personality type.

Since these "people" can't take the MBTI themselves, we have to take it "for them." Or, as many a qualified and practiced trainer can do "Type Watch" or "Type Read."  I personally have a great talent for this (as befits my MBTI Type) and can get 3 out of 4 letters, 3 out of 4 times (which translates to 85% accuracy).  However, the more invested in a person I may be (because I find them attractive, or intriguing) I can trip myself up because I find myself projecting the Type I hope they are. 

So in regards to characters on a page, we can start using methods to narrow down what Type we find a character to be. 

One way is to take the MBTI (or a quickie unofficial version) as though we have put ourselves in their shoes.  Become Wolverine as you answer the questions.  Channel Hal Jordan and ask yourself "What would GL do?" By yourself, if you have a sufficiently trained sense of empathy (and let's hope that you do if you are a writer!), a moment of "WWxD" can really help.

This method is frequently used in real life as a part of a 360 team building effort, where every team member takes a quick version of the indicator as though they were every other team member.  These are then collected and shared anonymously and compared to the actual person's self selected type.  It is then that the differences between reality and perception can be found.  If you have a collection of fellow creators, this might be a fun way to stimulate a discussion (or outright argument), about a character when you find how other people perceive the same person.  This parlor game is especially fun to use on political figures, as what personality they project on the campaign trail can be very different than how they act in chambers.

Another tool to use is the vocabulary they use in their dialogue.  Various Types frequently prefer to use different vocabulary words for the same concept, and their are many "word affinity" lists in the MBTI literature that one can refer to.  Are their word choices filled with mentions of values and harmony, or are they filled with logic and analysis?  Do they use "I" or "We" when speaking? Do they speak decisively or wonder about options?

If there is an a period of time that you are studying the character, start keeping a hash-mark checklist of vocabulary words (ignoring obviously "a, and, the" and the like).  Sort them between the 8 MBTI letters (they can be repeats in categories)  And while we are on the topic of language, let's give a nod to Body Language.  While super hero poses tend to obscure this, and artistic interpretation can make it fuzzy,  how a character moves can be very telling.  Is it flashy?  Quiet?  Long pauses of inaction followed by a flurry of action?  All of these can also tell one about one's type.

Yet another method is to study character conflicts - If you are pretty sure of one person's Type, but unsure about another, compare and contrast the characters.  What gets under Person A's skin about Person B?  Is there a Person C they share?  How do the relationships between A and B differ from A and C and from B and C?  Triangulation can be especially affective, especially if you are talking about a romantic love triangle, or two parents and child.

And lastly, one way to get a handle on a type of a character is simply to assign one to him or her.  If you have all 16 Type descriptions at your disposal, read through all of them until you find the one you think he or she is.  THEN read the opposite type where all the letters are different.  If the second description sounds like someone that your protagonist would punch (or kiss!!) within five minutes, your first pick is probably the right one!

So let's say you have used any of the above methods to assign a type to a character, what do you do with it?  That's what we will get into next.

Chapter One

Introduction

The concept of Psychological Type harkens back to as far as the Ancient Greeks (who codified ideas of the Ancient Sumerians) when the cause of differing personalities was thought to be caused by varying levels and ratios of the vital fluids of the human body (called "humors"), which were blood, yellow bile, black bile, and phlegm (the four temperament theory).

The four temperament theory suggests that there are four fundamental personality types: sanguine, choleric, melancholic, and phlegmatic.  This theory stayed dominant in proto psychology until nearly the 20th century, and still exists today (with new terms and causes). 

Then along came a man named Freud.  Freud's theories were revolutionary for the times, and he attracted many critics and protoges, sometimes found in the same person.  Two of those students were Adler (famous for creating the Inferiority Complex) and Carl Jung, who became his closest confidant and later his bittermost rival.

After many years of collaboration, Freud, Adler, and Jung all parted ways.  Jung had two primary criticisms of Freud's and Adler's theories, and these critiques were two sides of the same coin - in Freud, Jung found the theory overly reliant on outside influences, or was extraverted; in Adler, he found his theory overly reliant on internal structures, or was introverted.  Together, however, introverted and extraverted sources seemed to satisfy Jung's hypothesis, initially. 

That satisfaction was short-lived.  There were too many variations amongst people he observed to be Introverted and Extraverted for it to be the complete theory, despite that there were distinct divisions between the "I"s and the "E"s.  There had to be something more, and that's where he recognized the next piece in his developing Typology.

In what some would say was a precurser to cognitive psychology, Jung observed that people all do two things with information - They Perceive information and they make Judgments about said information, and that some preferred one over the other, and the sources of those perceptions and judgments also had their preferences - the introvered and extraverted spheres of their lives.  At this point, he had four distinct Types, based on their most preferred mental functions - Introvered Perception, Extraverted Perception, Introverted Judgment, and Extraverted Judgment.

Again, he believed that he had a complete model for his typology.  Each of the four were consistently distinct from the other, and the vast majority of the people he observed fit within one of the four classifications.  And yet again, it was not enough to account for the variations found within each Typology.  There had to be more granular way to distinguish them - meaning more divisions.  These next divisions he observed would flesh out the underlying structure, and pave the way to applying them to a more complete theory.

This concludes the Chapter One introduction of Typology.  Chapter Two will reveal the final aspects of the Typological structure, and introduce two new people into this family tree of Psychological Type who would move it from Theory to Application.