CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION: THE ROAD TO A COURSE OF ACTION.

Sometime in 1917, Katharine Cook Briggs, wife of a senior Washington DC public servant and scientist, met Clarence Myers, the new boyfriend of her only child Isabel, for the first time. The mother found the boyfriend pleasant, but unusual in terms of the personalities she had generally encountered (Boyd,1981). Prompted by this otherwise mundane event , Katharine Briggs went to the Library of Congress and commenced an investigation of personality, mostly through reading autobiographies and biographies. Out of this research, she constructed a four part personality framework.
In 1923, Katharine Briggs encountered a book called Psychological Types, newly translated into English and written by the Swiss psychiatrist C.G.Jung (1976). Considering his framework to be superior, she promptly destroyed her research and henceforth worked solely on Jung’s ideas. Jung’s typology became part of general family discourse, naturally involving Briggs’ daughter, now Isabel Myers, having married the “unusual” boyfriend. As a result of her work, Briggs also wrote an article entitled “Meet Yourself” which was published in the journal New Republic in 1926. In this article, she briefly described Jung’s typology, outlining the types of personalities he had categorised in this framework. A further article “Up from Barbarism”, arguing for the use of Jung’s and Freud’s ideas in education, was published in the same journal in 1928. There was no subsequent written response in the pages of the New Republic to either of Katharine Briggs’ articles .
Katharine Briggs and Isabel Myers expected that formally trained professional psychologists would use their skills to turn Jung’s framework to practical use for general benefit, consistent with similar applications of psychological knowledge in the current American society . But the family continued to use Jung’s ideas. Katharine Briggs was foremost in the family activity of observing people using his typology, gaining personal confirmation of its validity in this way. She also corresponded intermittently with Jung, meeting him, with her daughter, in 1937 on one of his visits to the USA . Isabel Myers in the meantime had demonstrated her literary skills by writing a prize-winning mystery novel and having a play produced, before electing to concentrate on her motherly duties at home.
By early 1942, there was no indication to these women that any application of Jung’s typology, useful or otherwise, was forthcoming. At this time, the context of the USA’s entry into World War II and an article published in Reader’s Digest on “the use of a `people sorting’ instrument” in theHumm-Wadsworth Temperament Scale, which was described as “a device to place the worker in the proper niche, keep him happy, and increase production” stimulated some action from Myers and Briggs. They wanted to help the American war effort and the family interest in personality directed their focus (Saunders;pp1-2). The instrument described in Reader’s Digest seemed to the two women to be a good idea, particularly given the call from the US Government for more effective ways of doing things, now that Amercia was on a war footing. Briggs and Myers considered that an understanding of individual differences would be a valuable contribution, particularly in the workplace.
Isabel Myers tested out this “people sorting” instrument, searching for its users and ultimately working for one of them. The personnel consultant Edward Hay, working at the time for an Insurance Company, taught her to use and interpret it (Saunders;pp2-3) Myers found that the Humm-Wadsworth did not seem to be particularly useful as a personality instrument . Through this experience, however, she had become interested in psychological instruments as a useful technology for explaining personality . Following a suggestion by her mother, and using much of the theoretical and practical knowledge in this area that Katharine Briggs had gathered, Isabel Myers commenced work on tne construction of a psychological instrument that would identify Jung’s personality types. This ultimately became the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, or MBTI (Saunders,1991;pp2-3). The MBTI involved Myers totally until her death in 1980.
At the outset of this enterprise, Isabel Myers and Katharine Briggs considered themselves scientists in the conventional sense, even though they had no professional qualifications in either mathematics or psychology, conventionally considered the basic requirements for the task. It was a family affair. Briggs’ father had been an academic scientist and her family in general was academically oriented. Her husband, Lyman Briggs, was a respected physicist who had risen through administrative ranks to be Director of the US Bureau of Standards for many years. Lyman Briggs also taught his daughter Isabel a “respect and an appreciation for, and a facility with `cause-and-effect’ in the scientific method” (Saunders; p114) , a useful attribute in the context of the task of constructing a psychological instrument.
In this thesis, I will examine the origin and development of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator in its American social and historical context, emphasising in that context the development of psychology as a science and its emphasis on quantification. I will use actor-network theory as expounded by Callon, Latour, Law and others to interpret the events surrounding the MBTI’s origin and development. The actor network will be used in particular to explain the current popularity of the use and interpretation of this instrument in the midst of its general lack of acceptance in mainstream American psychology.
In Chapter 2, I identify the American society of the 19th and 20th centuries as one valuing and promoting quantification and efficiency over a comprehensive range of activities and endeavours. The development of the discipline of psychology as part of this general theme of this society is given particular emphasis. Adding to the context for the MBTI, Chapter 3 provides an insight into the work of C.G. Jung, focussing on his approach to science and psychology and the development of his theory of psychological types. Importantly, it examines Jung’s influences on American psychology and its response to his type theory, in particular the lack of a practical application of these ideas. Chapter 4 then introduces actor-network theory by explaining what comprises the theory and also how it can be used as a means of understanding science in action. In Chapter 5, the actor-network is applied as a framework to events in the origin and development of the MBTI, providing a comprehensive picture of its achievements and setbacks in particular in its entry into the world of professional psychologists and their response. Finally, as a development from Chapter 5, the actor-network is used in Chapter 6 as a means of evaluating the current status of the MBTI. In this process, conclusions are reached in terms of the actor-network on reasons for its simultaneous success and failure.

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Thesis Index

Peter Geyer TYPE TRAINING AND COACHING

Peter Geyer
TYPE TRAINING AND COACHING