Jung Test History and Application

Jung Test History and Application of the Jung Personality Type Indicator The study of personality in a scientific manner is as old as the study of psychology, stretching back at least to Sigmund Freud and his pursuits (Hergenhahn & Olson 2011). Freud saw personality as well as all other aspects of the psyche as being ultimately rooted in biological needs and drives, however, and this has not sat well with theorists and researchers since Freud's time (Hergenhahn & Olson 2011).

Carl Jung, Freud's partner in research and in developing certain foundational theories in psychology for a time, eventually broke away and formed his own rather radical theories (Hergenhahn & Olson 2011; Boeree 2006). In addition to a full description of archetypal personas and personality archetypes, Jung developed a typology for personality that consisted of basically ranking individuals along three scales with opposite ends: introversion/extroversion, sensing/intuiting, and thinking/feeling (Boeree 2006).

Two later psychologists and researchers, Katharine Briggs and her daughter Isabel Briggs Meyers, added another scale, judging/perceiving, and developed a simple set of questions to determine where individuals are situated on these scales, and thus what their personality is (Boeree 2006). The Meyers-Briggs Type Indicator is still widely used today, and its origins can be directly traced back to Jung's personality theories (Boeree 2006).

The various responses to the questions classify individuals as one of sixteen types, and this type description can yield a great deal of information about how people perceive and interact with the world (Boeree 2006; HumanMetrics 2011). Taking the test for oneself can also be quite revealing. The test itself is incredibly straightforward, and there are multiple places on the World Wide Web to try different versions of the test. The original Meyers-Briggs Type Indicator was given in written form and contained 125 questions, though many versions now contain fewer (Boeree 2006; HumanMetrics 2011).

As I was taking the test, it appeared to be far too simplistic -- simply clicking "Yes" or "No" in response to a series of very short questions seemed like a dubious way to go about assessing someone's personality.

Many of the questions also seemed repetitive, asking the same thing in only a slightly different way, and as I assumed that these redundancies were purposeful I began to get suspicious as to how the test makers were trying to "trick" me, or what the different phrasing of the same question was meant to achieve (HumanMetrics 2011). The test was very fast, however, and it was actually kind of exciting to take it while wondering what my results would be.

The initial results of the test were somewhat surprising to me, as I was labeled as an INTJ. I have always thought of myself as fairly outgoing, and being labeled as an introvert seemed strange to me.

When I though about it, though, I realized that the test was (of course) fairly accurate in this assessment; I even recalled a few individual items on the test that proved this point -- my need to "reenergize" with some alone-time after hanging out with friends for awhile, or my preference for quite time at home as opposed to parties on many occasions (HumanMetrics 2011).

I was not at all surprised to learn that I was a thinker, on the other hand, and remain somewhat uncertain as to the descriptions of being intuitive and judging. When I read the entries that describe the INTJ type, my assessment of the test, its accuracy, and its usefulness and relevance to my life changed dramatically.

Often, personality descriptions (especially those based on pseudo-spiritual things like astrology and numerology) are so vague that almost anyone can see themselves described in them, but the descriptions I read of INTJs were very specific and directly spot-on.

At several points in my reading, I found myself actually laughing at the number of things the description said about me that I had said almost word-for-word to others -- my desire for efficiency in everything I do and encounter, my extreme respect for knowledge and competence, and even my emotional reserve and strong desire for people to make sense. More often than not I get frustrated when I.