It is interesting how people have misapplied them though. But I guess that’s like everything. Trauma is a great example where there is a specific profile, a measurement framework and yet it too can be misapplied where everyone claims everything or people ignore true trauma.
I'd like to propose that, for precision, personality and personality type should be distinguished from one another so that personality sits WITHIN the range of each personality type. Personality itself can change (within personality type) because it is modulated by gene-environment interaction, but personality type cannot change because it is inherited and its developmental range is constrained by genetic architecture (reaction norms). See https://jamesberryhill.substack.com/p/why-personality-type-doesnt-change
While personality types are not directly associated with pathologies, they can reveal the risk for developing pathological conditions. For example, people with dominant Fe/Fi personality type (a.k.a. feelers) are highly sensitive to stimuli concerning people and feelings, which also makes them more susceptible to relationship-related triggers causing emotional distress. This can manifest as high neuroticism, and pathologies like GAD, ASD and ADHD. In contrast, the exact same relationship-related stimuli fails to trigger stress-response in people with dominant Sensing or Thinking functions. So each personality type/temperament is sensitive to different types of stressors triggering different stress-responses. Personality type can thus be used to predict risk score for developing certain pathologies, not as a direct diagnostic tool. So I don't think there is any truth to the claim that ADHD would somehow be associated with ENTJ more than any other type. Besides, it is the Introverted iNntuitives (INxx) that are the highest psychopathological risk group overall, check https://jamesberryhill.substack.com/p/jungian-personality-types-and-mental
While it is very useful to test your personality type, people's response abilities vary, and the results are often mistypings, especially when inferred from self-reported online tests. It's not hard to see how mistyping can lead to negative downstream effects, such as the person believing they have a certain personality type and attempting to change their behavior to match the type the test claimed they would have. Person's true personality type, with all of its benefits and costs, can remain unknown to them while they attempt to behave like the type the tests told they'd have. Mistyping can thus lead to negative behavioral outcomes: the person adjusts their behavior according to the type they BELIEVE they have, not the type they actually have. So, while personality type tests are highly useful, they are subject to confirmation bias and their validity should be carefully considered on a case-by-case basis.
That said, I cannot resist offering you my admittedly unsolicited opinion: that you might be an ENTP instead of an ENTJ. While I don't know you personally, analysing your writing style gives away your cognitive functions and their order in your psyche. Specifically, you exhibit strong Ne and Ti, both of which are hallmarks of ENTP (Ne-Ti-Fe-Si), while being absent or rarely manifested in ENTJ (Te-Ni-Se-Fi). So, at least based my analysis of your writing style, it is highly unlikely that you could be an ENTJ. That's just my opinion, but of course I could be wrong, and the final decision about your personality type preference is always yours and yours alone.
Great adds and thanks for continuing the conversation. All of this is great to consider and a great way to understand the proclivities and the risks of pathology. I’m also right on the line of P and J. I have been accused of being both fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants AND pedantically rigid at the same time, for the same event. That’s the beauty of a profile: we can tease out those nuances with just a little poking.
Right now, I’m really trying to help people understand that there’s a rhyme and a reason for who they are and that the more we muddy the water, the harder it is to extract the true pathologies that need to be addressed.
I think that dies into your Junigan 8 function model and the shadow elements as well.
I think psychopathology itself is a highly problematic area. While personality tests are not very useful for diagnostic purposes, they are useful for prediction and prevention of risks. And besides personality type there are many other factors that should be considered when making diagnostic inferences and interventions, as I’ve argued here: https://jamesberryhill.substack.com/p/rethinking-psychiatric-disorders
INTJ here to say it makes a refreshing change to see character mentioned. Can't help feeling that some supposed disorders are more character dimensions than pathologies.
I totally agree. And as we saw in the other examples, true pathologies hiding under nuerodivergence. Hopefully, if we can test healthy personality off to one side, and true Cluster B pathology off on the other, those in the middle, who need the help and resources, can get them!
In our current age of splintered reality (1 event=500 news stories), lack of modern day "mantra" which describes the overall mores or "RAISON D'ÊTRE" of our culture, and add in that medically (DSM-5), we spent a lot more time focusing on pathology than definitions of wellness, it is no wonder there is still so much confusion. There are literally hundreds of defined mental illnesses.
There are few paradigms of mental wellness or what I would call sanity.
Suicides and mass killings are increasing and are normalized. An epidemic of loneliness amongst young folks (and men in particular) is a thing. There are 110 million Americans that are described as suffering from various mental illnesses at any given moment. There are 3 million Americans that fall under the rubric of being pyschotic (1% of our population).
Personality, or what we used to call having a personality, or "he is such a colorful character" or "he is a real character", in now looked at from a lens of negativity. One theory is, it takes two people for personality to be revealed or to be formed, because it needs the context of a relationship to compare and contrast it. Babies have personalities from the gitgo and so do dogs. Isn't the real truth your personality is both your inherent sensibility and partially an ongoing choice you make as you go through life ? One is not necessarily the same at 20 as at 80.
I've always seen personality tests as an interesting first approximation to understanding another person, particularly in the workplace. Assessments like MBTI offer a shared language for understanding who someone is and how to work with them. Focusing on utility rather than pathology, we can communicate around style more effectively, and also attempt to understand who we are or who we want to be perceived as (which is an entirely different dimension of personality assessment).
It's an attempt to learn how to interact and develop team dynamics, with a closer look at who the individuals are. Ignoring personality language entirely is a missed opportunity to get slightly more accurate. It's like saying everyone on your team is a bird. Great. But with a little more communication, we start to understand whether we have a bunch of blue jays, or are we a few humming birds and an emu?
-From a proud INTJ (weak n, strong everything else)
Exactly. When I realized what being an ENTJ meant, especially vs. the Sensing type, it allowed me to realize I wasn’t crazy, I just thought differently.
Very timely essay that explains someone I'm dealing with to a T. They're actually a combination of both types. They claim, what I think would be their personality, is ADHD, trauma-informed, etc., but they also have serious cluster B behaviors, which go hand in hand. They're also vehemently against the personality profiles, yet claim every other profile out there.
I am convinced the answer to the question "Why the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.” is because it can't, but I'll hedge that by saying "in most cases".
What can I say? Brilliant.
It is interesting how people have misapplied them though. But I guess that’s like everything. Trauma is a great example where there is a specific profile, a measurement framework and yet it too can be misapplied where everyone claims everything or people ignore true trauma.
I'd like to propose that, for precision, personality and personality type should be distinguished from one another so that personality sits WITHIN the range of each personality type. Personality itself can change (within personality type) because it is modulated by gene-environment interaction, but personality type cannot change because it is inherited and its developmental range is constrained by genetic architecture (reaction norms). See https://jamesberryhill.substack.com/p/why-personality-type-doesnt-change
While personality types are not directly associated with pathologies, they can reveal the risk for developing pathological conditions. For example, people with dominant Fe/Fi personality type (a.k.a. feelers) are highly sensitive to stimuli concerning people and feelings, which also makes them more susceptible to relationship-related triggers causing emotional distress. This can manifest as high neuroticism, and pathologies like GAD, ASD and ADHD. In contrast, the exact same relationship-related stimuli fails to trigger stress-response in people with dominant Sensing or Thinking functions. So each personality type/temperament is sensitive to different types of stressors triggering different stress-responses. Personality type can thus be used to predict risk score for developing certain pathologies, not as a direct diagnostic tool. So I don't think there is any truth to the claim that ADHD would somehow be associated with ENTJ more than any other type. Besides, it is the Introverted iNntuitives (INxx) that are the highest psychopathological risk group overall, check https://jamesberryhill.substack.com/p/jungian-personality-types-and-mental
While it is very useful to test your personality type, people's response abilities vary, and the results are often mistypings, especially when inferred from self-reported online tests. It's not hard to see how mistyping can lead to negative downstream effects, such as the person believing they have a certain personality type and attempting to change their behavior to match the type the test claimed they would have. Person's true personality type, with all of its benefits and costs, can remain unknown to them while they attempt to behave like the type the tests told they'd have. Mistyping can thus lead to negative behavioral outcomes: the person adjusts their behavior according to the type they BELIEVE they have, not the type they actually have. So, while personality type tests are highly useful, they are subject to confirmation bias and their validity should be carefully considered on a case-by-case basis.
That said, I cannot resist offering you my admittedly unsolicited opinion: that you might be an ENTP instead of an ENTJ. While I don't know you personally, analysing your writing style gives away your cognitive functions and their order in your psyche. Specifically, you exhibit strong Ne and Ti, both of which are hallmarks of ENTP (Ne-Ti-Fe-Si), while being absent or rarely manifested in ENTJ (Te-Ni-Se-Fi). So, at least based my analysis of your writing style, it is highly unlikely that you could be an ENTJ. That's just my opinion, but of course I could be wrong, and the final decision about your personality type preference is always yours and yours alone.
Sorry for the messy rant...
Great adds and thanks for continuing the conversation. All of this is great to consider and a great way to understand the proclivities and the risks of pathology. I’m also right on the line of P and J. I have been accused of being both fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants AND pedantically rigid at the same time, for the same event. That’s the beauty of a profile: we can tease out those nuances with just a little poking.
Right now, I’m really trying to help people understand that there’s a rhyme and a reason for who they are and that the more we muddy the water, the harder it is to extract the true pathologies that need to be addressed.
I think that dies into your Junigan 8 function model and the shadow elements as well.
I think psychopathology itself is a highly problematic area. While personality tests are not very useful for diagnostic purposes, they are useful for prediction and prevention of risks. And besides personality type there are many other factors that should be considered when making diagnostic inferences and interventions, as I’ve argued here: https://jamesberryhill.substack.com/p/rethinking-psychiatric-disorders
INTJ here to say it makes a refreshing change to see character mentioned. Can't help feeling that some supposed disorders are more character dimensions than pathologies.
I totally agree. And as we saw in the other examples, true pathologies hiding under nuerodivergence. Hopefully, if we can test healthy personality off to one side, and true Cluster B pathology off on the other, those in the middle, who need the help and resources, can get them!
In our current age of splintered reality (1 event=500 news stories), lack of modern day "mantra" which describes the overall mores or "RAISON D'ÊTRE" of our culture, and add in that medically (DSM-5), we spent a lot more time focusing on pathology than definitions of wellness, it is no wonder there is still so much confusion. There are literally hundreds of defined mental illnesses.
There are few paradigms of mental wellness or what I would call sanity.
Suicides and mass killings are increasing and are normalized. An epidemic of loneliness amongst young folks (and men in particular) is a thing. There are 110 million Americans that are described as suffering from various mental illnesses at any given moment. There are 3 million Americans that fall under the rubric of being pyschotic (1% of our population).
Personality, or what we used to call having a personality, or "he is such a colorful character" or "he is a real character", in now looked at from a lens of negativity. One theory is, it takes two people for personality to be revealed or to be formed, because it needs the context of a relationship to compare and contrast it. Babies have personalities from the gitgo and so do dogs. Isn't the real truth your personality is both your inherent sensibility and partially an ongoing choice you make as you go through life ? One is not necessarily the same at 20 as at 80.
Add to all of that, the issue that no-one wants to be ‘normal’. We all want to be nuero-divergent and so that’s zero incentive to fix any of that.
yes, Michael - "Neurodivergent is a nonmedical term" - Cleveland Clinic,
as opposed to "neurotypical". Yes, we all want to be 'special', to be valued
and recognized, to feel part of one family of humans, and we seek identity
and meaning in the relationships we have. Maybe one day we will know
each other as part of the "Human Race", a class of hominoids which is desperate
to be seen by others as having 'Class', and desperate to be loved. Sadly there
are those who capitalize on people's weaknesses, and milk it for their own gain.
Toptally agree.
I've always seen personality tests as an interesting first approximation to understanding another person, particularly in the workplace. Assessments like MBTI offer a shared language for understanding who someone is and how to work with them. Focusing on utility rather than pathology, we can communicate around style more effectively, and also attempt to understand who we are or who we want to be perceived as (which is an entirely different dimension of personality assessment).
It's an attempt to learn how to interact and develop team dynamics, with a closer look at who the individuals are. Ignoring personality language entirely is a missed opportunity to get slightly more accurate. It's like saying everyone on your team is a bird. Great. But with a little more communication, we start to understand whether we have a bunch of blue jays, or are we a few humming birds and an emu?
-From a proud INTJ (weak n, strong everything else)
Exactly. When I realized what being an ENTJ meant, especially vs. the Sensing type, it allowed me to realize I wasn’t crazy, I just thought differently.
Very timely essay that explains someone I'm dealing with to a T. They're actually a combination of both types. They claim, what I think would be their personality, is ADHD, trauma-informed, etc., but they also have serious cluster B behaviors, which go hand in hand. They're also vehemently against the personality profiles, yet claim every other profile out there.
It’s absolutely frustrating. I can imagine.
The gaslighting is no joke!
I am convinced the answer to the question "Why the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.” is because it can't, but I'll hedge that by saying "in most cases".
Haha. When it does land close, we shouldn’t be surprised, when it doesn’t land close, we need to look for the mailman. 🤓
I am still convinced personality will blossom only when subordinated to the call of Life Force to synthesize the binaries sympathy and cooperation!
I would agree that personality needs a higher aspiration to unlock it’s full value.