Peter Geyer
Type Coaching and Training

My life outside of power
I see myself in the faces
Classes, groups and races
Locked out of power
And I hear myself in their music

–Jack Bruce and Kip Hanrahan, '52nd Street'

The Australian Journal of Psychological Type first appeared in March 1992. At Bronte the previous October, the various State groups had agreed to form a national Association for Psychological Type, and one of the outcomes was a publication.

The American APT, the model for the association, produced the academically–oriented Journal of Psychological Type, and the Bulletin, a general publication with articles and news. The Australian Journal came out as neither of those. Perhaps that was the approach of its founder, David Scott.

David had a background as Editor of the AITD's publication, and had been an original member of the Victorian part of the associations that became today's AusAPT. He set up the first Journal with a selection of papers from the Bronte conference.

I had a incidental role in the next issue. Penny Sharples and I had brought Greg Huszczo over from the USA to work with Australia Post. Greg's presentation on job type and work space found its way into the Journal.

By then I was on the Victorian AAPT committee, my first experience of committee life. At the Twin Waters conference later in 1992 I became National Vice–President by accident. No one else seemed to want to do it, so I put my hand up. Position without power, actually; organisational consultants will recognise the situation.

My role as Vice-President covered research matters, including the Journal. My first real contribution started with an offer to write a review column, 'Typetexts and Materials.' I wanted the people selling the MBTI to offer the widest range of available materials, so that users could choose the best. I haven't been as successful as I hoped, but perhaps the growing number of Internet sites will serve the purpose I had in mind.

The people associated with the Journal – David Scott and Peter Malone – were also based in Victoria, so I became more involved than I'd intended. I found myself an editor of sorts fairly quickly, particularly after David moved to north–eastern Victoria. Time and resources were constrained, and I ended up picking up more of the day–to–day things. With a team of three INs, communication wasn't what it might have been, even though my colleagues were genial, friendly people.

David had some good ideas for getting advertising and subscriptions, but there seemed no time to actually do those things. At one stage the Journal was in danger of not being produced at all: one well–meaning national committee member was telling people that there wasn't going to be one.

That didn't make sense to me, because we were taking money from members on the basis that they would get a publication three times a year. Curiously, there weren't really any discussions about how we were going to put out a periodical; the focus seemed to be on how we couldn't.

As David's role diminished, I effectively became the coordinating editor, responsible for getting the whole thing out. Peter Malone contributed, but under similar pressures: he wrote a column and gave me valuable advice. Peter's contribution to the Association is more than significant, and hasn't been recognised in the way it might.

In those days before e–mail was prevalent, much time was taken up in producing text. Peter Malone's first articles were handwritten, and style guidelines related to simple typing rules such as double–spacing. Submission of articles on disk later became the norm.

I had no formal editing skills, simply a knowledge of grammar and an interest in writing. I found that contributors often didn't share my perspective – what constitutes a sentence, for instance. Type, of course, explains that quite well. There was never an agreed writing style for the Journal, and people's contributions were left as examples of how they spoke about what they were interested in.

The hardest thing to do was to get contributions. Many type users aren't natural writers, even avoiding writing altogether if they can. They also have other things to do. Harassing people is not my style, so, apart from the odd call to regulars or people I thought might contribute something interesting, I relied on national committee members to push for articles. Marilena Stirling was the best at that, and her efforts were appreciated. Michael Jensen in Victoria helped with advertising.

One of the concerns was cost: quite rightly, there was a lot of pressure from the national committee on that. I found a printer with whom I could work, and who was able to keep costs down. Ron Hannan deserves an award for the effort he put in, from advice on paper through to layout.

Ron suggested a more cost–effective way of posting the Journals, and ended up doing the mail–outs. That was a double bonus, firstly because I didn't have the time to do it myself, but also because from time to time questions arose as to whether I was using the mailing list for my own business. I found that tiresome, as I'd never considered that; perhaps it's how businesses are run, I don't know.

One of my aims as Editor was to make the Journal respected internationally. I sought articles from overseas, and sent copies to all the APTs I knew of, to key figures in type, and to those who had visited here. Sally Campbell and Roger Pearman were regular writers. I also had a lot of support from Mary McCaulley. Both the Journal and the Review are seen as models for publications in countries where use of the MBTI is in its infancy.

Being Editor wasn't a place to get huge amounts of feedback: the only written feedback I ever got was from non–Australians. But some events gave me much pleasure. On the practical side, a new design, orchestrated by Penny Sharples and designed by Monika Evers, was exciting to me. There was also the genuine excitement shown by Don Siebert in Kansas City in 1995, when he got permission to publish Angelo Spoto's keynote speech. Don was not really a supporter of the Journal, for reasons I never understood, so this was something to remember.

The republishing of articles from Greg Latemore and me in the APT Bulletin showed that people did actually read the Journal and take it seriously. Dan Foster's three–part series on the MBTI from an instrument perspective and David Haynes's whimsical writing gave me pleasure as well.

I was proud to publish Anthony Moore's keynote speech from the 1997 APT Conference. Anthony's speech was a fascinating personal journey about discovering the father he had never met, expressed in a Jungian theme. It was a great way to end my time as Editor.

I put a lot into the Journal, at some personal cost. I found the politics debilitating, and I don't care to go through that again. Life's too short. But I got a lot out of it too, in that it enabled me to write, something I prefer to do more than anything else. People whose views I respect told me that what I was doing was worthwhile.

The Australian Journal of Psychological Type was launched in March 1992. David J Scott was the founding editor. Peter Geyer took over in 1995 and continued until 1998.

In 1998, the Journal was relaunched as the Australian Psychological Type Review, continuing an unbroken run of ten years of publication of Australia's national type periodical. Thank you to everyone who has contributed along the way.

–Philip L Kerr, Editor 2000

Photograph courtesy of Jamie Johnston, CAPT Library. PETER GEYER (INTP) is a consultant, researcher and writer in the field of C G Jung's theory of psychological types. He conducts MBTI Accreditation programs and presents internationally on a regular basis. Peter is a life member of AusAPT and a professional affiliate of the Australian Psychological Society.