Hello! This carrd was made to inform you about the origins of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) and why it shouldn't be used instead of Jungian cognitive functions.
Sections:
What is MBTI?
Who is Jung?
Who is Briggs?
Typology
16Personalities
What is MBTI?
The Myers–Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) is a self-report questionnaire indicating differing psychological preferences in how people perceive the world and make decisions. The test attempts to assign four categories: introversion or extraversion, sensing or intuition, thinking or feeling, judging or perceiving. One letter from each category is taken to produce a four-letter test result, like "INFJ" or "ENFP". The original versions of the MBTI were created by Katharine Cook Briggs and her daughter Isabel Briggs Myers. It's based on theories proposed by Carl Jung.
Jung's theory of psychological types was based on clinical observation, introspection, and anecdote. He postulated a sequence of four cognitive functions (thinking, feeling, sensation, and intuition), each having one of two polar orientations (extraversion or introversion), giving a total of eight dominant functions. The MBTI is based on these eight hypothetical functions, although with some differences in expression from Jung's model.
There are many problems with the MBTI. Hopefully, this carrd will help you understand them and the differences between Jung's original theories and Briggs' version of them.
Jung vs Briggs
When you google the topic “Jung vs. Briggs” the quick search will generate the answer:
“The MBTI is based on the conceptual theory proposed by Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung, who had speculated that people experience the world using four principal psychological functions—sensation, intuition, feeling, and thinking—and that one of these four functions is dominant for a person most of the time.”
Who are Jung and Briggs and why is it relevant to know who they are and understand the differences of their contributions to the phenomenon of personality tests and typology as a whole?
It’s a very important thing to distinguish these two incredibly different people.
Who is Jung? What has he done?
Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961), a Swiss psychiatrist and therapist who developed Analytical Psychology, is one of the trailblazers in the field of Depth Psychology and is the founder of the Jungian Psychology movement. He was an ex-colleague/ex-student of Sigmund Freud.
(Sigismund Schlomo Freud is the Jewish-Austrian neurologist that is the founder of the method of psychoanalysis, and the strange man referenced a lot in your Psych 101 classes for the psycho-sexual theory of pathologies of the human psyche. Jung ended his 6 year friendship and mentor-student relationship in 1913 with Freud after being acknowledged as his protege because of multiple disagreements.)
He pursued his own studies in the field of psychoanalysis with a more holistic approach for his patients in psychiatric wards. He founded the cognitive functions (intuition, sensing, thinking and feeling- it wasn’t called the terms we used today because he didn’t have established definitions of them yet) and the four-function-model of the “Self” that we now loosely understand as the “ego.”
Psycho-analytical-typology as we know it today is built on the method Jung created for therapy, not personality typing. His true goal of understanding the mind is “Individuation”- which is the idea/theory of bringing your truest self into consciousness. It is considered a life-long process.
Another popular typology system derived from Jung’s studies is Socionics developed by Lithuanian researcher Aushra Augusta in the 1970's.
At the end of his life Jung found 512 types, 32 subtypes under each of the 16 known personality types that we know today.
Who is Jung? What has he done?
His contribution to the field of psychology and by extension to socio-philosophy are:
The Collective Unconscious and Archetypes (which is why meme culture predates the creation of the internet)Dream AnalysisThe words “introversion/introvert” and “extroversion/extrovert” that we all use so casually today. He didn’t make this word to describe people, he used it to describe the dispositions of the cognitive functions for psychoanalysis (i.e. Introverted Thinking Function vs Extroverted Thinking Function)Nuance in psychological diagnosis. Psychological ComplexThe recognition of spirituality as a part of the psycheThe Individuation ProcessThe revelation of the parts that make up a person’s psyche and the system to study it: the true-self vs. the persona, the ego, the shadow, the subconscious and the superego (derivative and expansion of Freud’s study on the id, ego and superego) studies as complex separate parts that make a whole personThe Anima and The AnimusArt TherapyDance and Movement Therapy
Some Jungian analysts (that were directly Jung’s students) who contributed to the development and divergence of these studies: Marie-Louise von Franz, Aniela Jaffe, Erich Neumann and many more others.
Who is Briggs? What has she done?
Isabel Briggs Myers (1897–1980) was an American mystery novel author and co-creator with her mother, Katharine Cook Briggs, of a personality inventory known as the Myers–Briggs Type Indicator.
They ripped off Jung’s studies and did absolutely what he didn’t want to be done, create labels to identify yourself with instead of using it to understand yourself with. These two people together as a mother and daughter team had no formal training in psychology, statistics, sociology or psychometrics. And without foundational education in these very specialized fields they “translated” Jungian studies and tried to apply it directly to typing fictional characters.
There’s not enough information on their research methods because the facts of Myers’ personal history are “closely guarded” by her foundation. Why? Because they are racist and push a lot of sexist views as well.
Here are some articles supporting this claim: 1 2
The Myers-Briggs Company has mostly monopolized the personality typology system and certifications in the corporate fields, meaning that they have the money to hide certain bits of negative info of Isabel and Katherine Briggs. Most of the research supporting the MBTI's validity has been produced by the Center for Applications of Psychological Type, an organization run by the Myers-Briggs Foundation, and published in the center's own journal, the Journal of Psychological Type. They don’t want to be challenged.
Who is Briggs? What has she done?
So what did they do that destroyed Carl Jung’s dream to share the path of Individuation for everyone?
Created the dichotomy of Sensing Functions, Feeling functions, Intuitive functions and Thinking Functions and misused the words “introvert” and “extrovert” to describe actual people and thus the four-letter-labels was created. Lead the “intuition bias” in which intuitives were given more importance to society than “sensors” created because of them being intuitives themselves (and discovering that Jung was an intuitive as well).Created toxic stereotyping of the types, especially of sensors. Adding a new and unprovable trait to the tests: J vs P (judger vs perceiver). In Jung’s theory, there is no “judging-perception” dimension (J vs. P), that was a creation of Myers and Briggs. Made the tests to make metrics to falsely check and give info on the romantic compatibility of couples. MBTI Step I includes 93 forced-choice questions (88 are in the European English version). "Forced-choice" means that a person, if possible, should choose only one of two possible answers to each question which is absolutely limiting.Reinforced these scoring systems which also encouraged the IQ bias movement of academic America in their times which still causes problems for our current generation.
There are problems with both the theory and the construction of the MBTI. It was said a lot that they weren’t very skilled in making tests so they just sprinkled this little bit in and lo and behold, here we are using their strange 4 letter dichotomy label. They would cheat results of POC (especially when the person was African-American) so that none of them can be classified as intelligent thinking types. There are also some statements of them not believing that men can be feeler types and therefore reinforcing sexist beliefs and toxic masculinity.
There’s so many other problems that they caused in their times, but there are no verifiable sources for other claims because the MBTI Company has a monopoly of info surrounding their founder.
So is typology wrong?
The Myers-Briggs method is certainly questionable, but highly researched typology enthusiasts understand this and go back to Jung’s methods once they realize or discover him.
Jung started the study for therapy methods but further developed the system as psychological homework accessible to all of us, because there are objective benefits to learning how to use the information system we have in our brains, born out of the nature vs. nurture struggle history existing in each person.
Because of their simplicity, the labels popularized by the MBTI are used by most typology communities and a lot of different theories and approaches, even if they use the Jungian Cognitive Function models instead. Unfortunately, there is no other well-known way to refer to different types at the moment, but individual communities try to distance themselves from MBTI and stop giving any attention to Briggs by calling them different names, such as function types or cognitive types instead of MBTI types.
A well-known variant at the moment is four letter type, shortened to 4LT.
It's important to understand that even if you do your best to appreciate function typology while distancing yourself from Briggs' work and ideas, it's still necessary to be critical of it because of the impact the MBTI has had on it, type labels being the most obvious example.
16Personalities
16Personalities is a personality test website that uses the labels popularized by the MBTI to describe types in their own model.
From the 16Personalities framework article:
"With our model, we’ve combined the best of both worlds. We use the acronym format introduced by Myers-Briggs for its simplicity and convenience, with an extra letter to accommodate five rather than four scales. However, unlike Myers-Briggs or other theories based on the Jungian model, we have not incorporated Jungian concepts such as cognitive functions, or their prioritization. Jungian concepts are very difficult to measure and validate scientifically, so we’ve instead chosen to rework and rebalance the dimensions of personality called the Big Five personality traits, a model that dominates modern psychological and social research."
16Personalities is a reworked Big Five test, not an MBTI test. Their approach differs from Myers-Briggs' in many ways (their scales are based on Big Five dimensions rather than Jungian concepts, hence the five traits, focus on type groups, the absence of cognitive functions and so on) and they are not affiliated with Briggs or her ideas in any way.
Taking their test will not tell you about your MBTI type, your four letter type, your cognitive functions or anything similar. It's its own model and a Big Five test with different labels for convenience.
Thank you for reading! I hope this helped you understand what's wrong with the MBTI and the differences between Briggs' model and Jung's original theories.
It's important to recognize the harm Briggs' work has done and to stop supporting her approach. If you are interested in Jungian cognitive functions, please do your best to stop popularizing her ideas when you talk about them.
Because the MBTI has had a big impact on typology as a whole, it's important to be critical of it and to recognize what kind of effect it has had. It's not possible to improve our communities without thinking about small things about the way we interact with our interests too, like not calling four letter types MBTI types and telling other people about the problems with MBTI when they do it.
However, do keep in mind that Jung shouldn't be idolized. Typology shouldn't only be criticized because of the problems with MBTI, but because of all the possible problems that can come from all of its authors. Be critical of your interests the way you interact with them.
Information about Jung vs Briggs provided by @chaoTicINTP
(read Naisu's full document here)
carrd made by multiple people; please dm @isfpthought on twitter if you have any questions or anything to add