Thursday, August 30, 2012

Learning you


Two housewives, Katherine Briggs and her daughter Isabel, who had been investigating human personality traits around Katherine's kitchen table in the early 1920s, were excited when the psycologist and psychiatrist Carl Jung published his 1923 book on the same subject. They took his findings to a new level, extrapolating his theories to create a repeatable personality preference survey, finally producing the famous Myers-Briggs Type Indicator which is widely used in psychological and employment testing today. Katherine started her research partly as a result of being disgusted with the waste of war, during WWI, thinking there must be a better way for men to resolve their disputes.

Katherine was home schooled and home schooled her daughter Isabel as well. Isabel's father, Lyman Briggs, worked in the field of physics, being director of the Bureau of Standards in Washington. Isabel grew up in Washington and later attended Swarthmore  College, earning a degree in political science, She met her husband of 61 years, "Chief" Clarence Myers. during college.

Like her mother, Isabel was concerned with stopping conflict among people, and intensified her research when WWII came. She was allowed to test over 5000 students at George Washington University, and studied the results for years, looking for patterns among dropouts and successful students.

I'm guessing she was an intuitive since she was so fixated on patterns.

Ok, so they were very educated housewives.

9 comments:

  1. The danger is people are limited to their psychological patterns.
    However human nature does not change, and profiling does not change the heart.

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    Replies
    1. Well, I think change would be the whole point, Adullamite, and sometimes being aware of your strong and weak areas, especially when you are under stress, gives you direction on what you need to work on to be a more complete person. If one pays attention, one might also gain insight into why the people around you act like they do.

      Since we are born with our base (though undeveloped) personalities, I'm going to take a chance and say it seems something that is put into our 'wiring" by our creator.

      I do agree that simply knowing about something doesn't in itself make changes to that something.

      To me, I think some people rely too much on this personality thing, to the point where they use it as an excuse NOT to change for the better, or think they are locked in to certain ways of going through life, and miss the whole point about using the knowledge to improve. Some, not all, but some, might say they are guided from within toward the change that, little by little, brings them to the way their creator would have them to be.

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  2. I don't think personality is changeable, only behaviour.

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    Replies
    1. Attitude can be changed though. Just keep it up. :)

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  3. So, they were the ones who came up with electro-shock treatments after trying to use a fork to shove a extra-thick slice of bread into a regular-sized toaster slot?

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    Replies
    1. Naw, you are thinking about the "enlightened" treatment the progressives had for what they called the "feeble-minded" from the 1920s through the 1960s. Interesting you mention that because I have been working on a post about that for a very long time, and it is now so long it could be a book. Wait for "lobotomies". I mean to read about it, not do it. :) How's it going?

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    2. Well, the doctors say that my lobotomy was obviously successful because I have been a regular over at Adullamite's for about as long as you have. Hmm, I wonder what that is saying about you?

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    3. I think I can reform Adullamite.

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  4. I'm not a big one for labelling or thinking that one can pigeon-hole everyone into categories (as I've seen done). I often come across as one type of personality in one context and a completely different personality in another. (Perhaps because my scores are nearly dead neutral in between both extremes on both axes - if this is the scale I'm thinking it is).

    However, anything that gives one insight into oneself, as long as what you're told isn't used to supercede reality, is probably a good thing. And I'm all for world peace and doing away with war.

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