Unraveling the Origins of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator

The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator was created in 1943 by a curious mother-daughter pair, Katharine Cook Briggs and Isabel Briggs Myers. After meeting Isabel’s future husband, Katherine became interested in personality type theories, realizing that Clarence, the fiancé, had a different way of viewing the world than their family. The main ideas that Briggs and Myers based their research on was backed by the psychiatrist Carl Jung, who is known as one of the founding fathers of psychology alongside Sigmund Freud. The concept of people being different in terms of the way they see the world, take in information, and how they make decisions encouraged these two women to demonstrate and present these ideas to the world and make them accessible to a

When I took the MBTI, some of the things I knew about myself were reinforced, and I also learned some new things about myself and my personality. The four letter code that I received was ISTJ, representing introversion, sensing, thinking, and judging. I expected each of these preferences, and when I read the definition of each, it further strengthened my understanding of what my personality really means in “technical terms.” My four letter code came with titles such as the Duty Fulfiller, the Responsible Realist and the Inspector, names I also agree that pertain to myself. Some of the attributes of an ISTJ personality type include serious and quiet, dependable, well-organized, hard-working, goal-striving, determined, logic-based, orderly, and traditional. If I were asked to describe myself, I would more than likely use nearly all of these terms to do so, which goes to show how accurate this test was, for me at least. But, I also can pick out some challenges that may arise because of the personality type that I am. One example relates to being an introvert, who prefer to focus on one thing at a time.