Posted on Sat, Aug. 30, 2008
I'm an ENFJ. How about you?
Chances are, if you've ever gone through counseling or career training, you've taken the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator.
This test asks you dozens of questions about how you behave in social settings, how you like to make choices, how you regard other people.
Then it tells you, in four letters, what type of personality you seem to have. The letters refer to eight preferences, arranged along four scales: from Extroversion (E) to Introversion (I); Sensing (S) to Intuition (N); Thinking (T) to Feeling (F); Judging (J) to Perceiving (P).
Some academic psychologists scoff that the Myers-Briggs lacks rigor. Millions of people, however, have used it to understand themselves more deeply and to get along better with others.
That makes Katharine Myers proud, and it makes her anxious. She is the current guardian of the MBTI, which was invented in this area, in Swarthmore, in the mid-20th century. This soft-spoken, cheery woman of 82 now lives in the Kendal retirement community in Chester County.
The test has made Myers quite well-off, though she could care less. She checks her finances once a year to see how much she can give away to her favored charities, from an order of nuns to the Chester Boys Choir.
She cares most about carrying on the mission begun by her mother-in-law, Isabel Briggs Myers, and Isabel's mother, Katharine Briggs. That mission is nothing less than fostering enough self-understanding and tolerance to change the world. No wonder Katharine Myers worries about having enough time.
The story of the test dates to the 1920s, when the mother-daughter team from Swarthmore became captivated by the psychological theories of Carl Jung. They set to work creating an instrument to measure Jungian psychological types.
The MBTI took shape during World War II. It took off in the 1960s as career counseling and group dynamics came into vogue.
Katharine Myers believes in the MBTI because, she says, it changed her life. As a Delaware County high schooler, she says, "I thought there was something wrong with me. I didn't fit with the cheerleader set." Then, in 11th grade, the mother of her classmate (and future husband) Peter Myers came to school to give the class this odd new test.
"Through the Indicator, I learned that the way I am is OK," she said. "I was a type that a lot of other people were: Introverted. That freed me to go through the world being who I was."
Introverted, but not scared. She went on to get a degree in psychology from Penn ("I was the only woman in some of those lecture halls") and to blaze trails in the business world. Eventually, after their first marriages withered, she and Peter wed. When Isabel Myers died in 1980, she asked her son and his wife to be "the guardians of her baby."
Awed by this charge - "Isabel was a creative genius, I'm not" - Myers has done her best to extend the test's reach, deepen its research, while protecting it from abuse. The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator Trust is adamant that the "types" are to be viewed as fluid and descriptive, not fixed and judgmental. No type is better than another. The test is not supposed to be used in hiring, though Myers suspects it is: "One thing I've learned in life are the limits of control."
Now, Myers - mentally sharp, with only a cane as a concession to age - worries who will take over the MBTI Trust after her time comes. Who will protect her heroes' legacy with the same fierce loyalty? The trust's board has expanded to take in younger generations, but no new champion has stepped up. So, this octogenarian has hired an "executive coach" to help her do a better job of managing the transition.
Her eyes dance when she talks of expanding the MBTI's usefulness: "The purpose of knowing your type is to give you a better feeling about who you are. But the next step for us is to help people look at their imperfections, to see, accept and forgive their dark side, instead of projecting it out on other people."
At her age, Myers could be forgiven for avoiding stress, pampering herself.
She's not interested; she has a legacy to uphold, a world to heal. "It's easy to give up. I choose not to. I may be just one grain of sand, but without each grain of sand, you wouldn't have a beach, would you?"
To comment, e-mail csatullo@phillynews.com.
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