Peter Geyer

• MSc
• Independent Scholar; Collection Custodian (volunteer position) at Australian Association for Psychological Type

Twenty years ago, I embarked on a sometimes wild journey of teaching various kinds of people about the MBTI® instrument, so they could be qualified to purchase and use it – what's now called Certification. In doing so, I had to find an effective way of explaining the distinctions between types and traits to people who, like me, did not come to type...

Twenty years ago, I embarked on a sometimes wild journey of teaching various kinds of people about the MBTI® instrument, so they could be qualified to purchase and use it – what's now called Certification. In doing so, I had to find an effective way of explaining the distinctions between types and traits to people who, like me, did not come to type...

When we trace the genealogy of a concept we uncover the different ways in which it may have been used in earlier times. We thereby equip ourselves with a means of reflecting critically on how it is currently understood. Quentin Skinner Every conceptual formula is psychological in its essence C.G. Jung C.G. Jungʼs theory of psychological types was s...

Although Isabel Myers was interested in normal behaviour; the Level II items that were in the MBTI from the start (which have become the basis for Step III) are about adjustment in its broadest sense. Some appear to think that failure to adjust to the current society is a mental problem; using terms like disorder; resilience and positivity as indic...

The Indicator also includes a fourth index, J–P, which reflects the attitude taken toward the environment whether judging (J) or perceptive (P) and so indicates the nature of whichever process is extraverted. Isabel Briggs Myers This paper focuses on the J–P scale of the MBTI and its antecedent, the BMTI. Its origins, purpose and relationship to C....

5. Why are there type questionnaires and what do they do? Why Measure Type? Personality Type or, more specifically, Psychological Type (take your pick) are theories about individual personality. They arenʼt derived from measurement, unlike trait constructs e.g. the Big 5 or Five Factor Model, nor do they depend on it. Yet the way that they are usua...

4. Psychological Type, Other Ideas, and Society Every conceptual formula is psychological in its essence C.G.Jung Ideas, Presuppositions and Reality Nothing is more real than an idea to a person who thinks C.G.Jung Any idea that has people in mind or includes them in some way can be said to have within it some presupposiitions about what human bein...

Psychological Type Every conceptual formula is psychological in its essence C.G.Jung Psychology and its categories Psychology has its origins in philosophy, so, as Jerome Kagan (2013) has recently observed, itʼs not surprising that its literature and practice contains a number of categories i.e. terms with particular meanings. All of them are const...

2. What is a Jungian? I am glad I am Jung and not a Jungian C.G.Jung To talk of Jungians, of post–Jungians and of schools of Jungians, is in itself a contentious matter. Jung stated that there was simply one Jungian – himself. He said he had no ambition to start a school of psychology. Andrew Samuels A Jungian identity problem The question of what...

What is Personality? "Personality" is a word that can have a wide range of meanings. In the public eye, and in the media, "Personalities" are celebrities of one kind of another, in which the public at large is presumed to have an interest in what they do and how they live. Interest is may be focused on appearances, romance, sometimes a curiosity ab...

A man is not complete when he lives in a world of statistical truth C.G.Jung Itʼs now 100 years since C.G. Jung spoke for the first time about extraversion and introversion as terms identifying direction of psychological energy, or libido (as he defined it). 90 years have also passed since the publication of Jungʼs book Psychological Types and its...

In my home of sand outside the city of gold... I need to buy myself an answer, but the truthʼs already been sold Jack Bruce Truth Truth, however defined, is a gold standard in research. Sometimes, though, the price of gold can be too high and, as with the quotation above, something may be left out in order to make a point, or even to evade one. A c...

Extraversion and Introversion are the only terms amongst C.G. Jung's typological constructs that have passed into general discourse, albeit in varying interpretations. This paper examines what Jung wrote about this idea in English language publications and some responses of contemporaries in similar publications over a period of roughly thirty year...

In the practice and teaching of what is currently, perhaps misleadingly, understood as personality type, "function" is a given construct, mostly appended to a type-associated questionnaire. Discussion or explication of what "functions" are usually presumes they are cognitive processes (undefined). Any debate consists of issues of order and directio...

A reason why this kind of approach to understanding people may not be as successful as one might expect (inside or outside certain environments), may be that more time is spent on praxis or practice than on engagement with theory, or even research. Theory informing practice, how practice can be explained (compared with other ideas), why a particula...

Whether you think that there are different kinds of personality, with essential core distinctions; that humans are more or less the same, with variations in the strength of measurable traits; or that there is no individual self at all, simply mediated selves – adaptations to situations as they arise – then the relationship of brain to mind is of re...

Views on personality i.e. what people are like and how they might act, are implicit in how societies operate. Usually, these social and political frameworks presume similarity, even for libertarians. Economics, education and marketing are just some areas in which a specific way of behaving is presumed of citizens, consumers, or other generic labels...

We tend not to accept the possibility that something meaningful could actually be random Nicolas Bouleau The mathematician Nicolas Bouleau thinks "the question of meaning is at the heart of scientific knowledge" (2011). Consequently, arriving at an interpretation, or "making meaning", is irreversible. You canʼt go back to what obtained beforehand,...

INTP) is an amateur and dilettante in the style, if not the fashion or period, of those currently identified as 'romantic scientists'. Use your imagination … get it all back again. Alan Spenner Assigning things, people, or their actions to categories is a ubiquitous part of work in the modern bureaucratic state. For the majority of people engaged i...

The Shadows of Type: Psychological type through seven levels of development UK: Lulu, 2010 Peter Geyer (INTP) would like to see psychological type a respected part of general and professional discourse about people's work and lives. Psychological type is a European idea— central European, to be precise. C G Jung was a thinker in the context of Germ...

Truly civilized societies do not hold predawn power breakfasts Terry Eagleton The philosopher and critical thinker Terry Eagleton observes that "a fearful idolatry of work" holds in the United States and similar countries. This is something to seriously consider if your early waking hours are spent in business meetings such as a work group in a caf...

Type measurement methods used today are based on the work of C.G.Jung, who commenced developing his theory of psychological types a century ago. He commenced with extraversion–introversion, and over time added the mental activities or functions of sensation, intuition, thinking and feeling. None of these terms were original; Jung provided his own d...

An international meeting on type research and theory 6–8 June 2010 Some curiosities 'Personality type', the umbrella term for C G Jung's psychological types, Keirseyan temperament and related ideas, is a collection of theories and associated research. A reason why this approach to understanding human beings may not be as successful as one might exp...

Jung's Red Book is a consequence of his 'confrontation with the unconscious' Peter Geyer (INTP) pursues the meaning of psychological type and other Jungian ideas on personality, often finding them in unexpected places. I can't afford to take a rest I'm heading out into the sun And find the place where I once saw a new life starting It's not so far...

INTP) takes an historical interest in the origin and development of the MBTI, particularly the nature and meaning of its questions. The Myers–Briggs Type Indicator is Isabel Briggs Myers's chosen method for articu-lating her ideas about C G Jung's theory of psychological types. Notwithstanding the ultimate publication of her book Gifts Differing an...

This paper examines data from 637 MBTI ® Form K (Step II ™) profiles generated from Australian managers and professionals and reflects on the interpretation and use of the additional information from its facets (sub-scales). Analyses of the intercorrelational patterns of the facets with their main preferences indicate that the results from this Aus...

This paper examines data from 637 MBTI ® Form K (Step II ™) profiles generated from Australian managers and professionals and reflects on the interpretation and use of the additional information from its facets (sub-scales). Analyses of the intercorrelational patterns of the facets with their main preferences indicate that the results from this Aus...

Will you take me as your mistress? Long and dark hair Will you cut it off when it is useless? All of my hair I have never seen the bottom The bottom of the well Could you ever love a mistress? It never feels the same... Inara George I use the term identity to denote a psychological conformity C.G. Jung To dive into psychology is to dive into a whir...

I spent time as a Centrelink customer and employee of the Australian Electoral Commission Mr Rudd said the quality of government service was more important than the delivery mechanism. Workplaces, when you get to have them, are a large part of people's lives, and some-times deaths. They are places where people meet others similar to them, or differ...

Personality, however described, is an important component in the search for work, a career, or simply how to live. One of the dilemmas in providing career advice is balancing optimism ("you can be whoever you want to be") with reality (abilities, interests, approach to life etc.). There's evidence that being optimistic in this way isn't very helpfu...

What is it to be Australian—or not to be, to be excluded, for whatever reason? Does it consist simply of just being in, on or of the land, or having begun life there and gone elsewhere? An immigrant society such as Australia has its beginnings with people who have begun life elsewhere, then arrived on its shores, some involuntarily, for whatever re...

A memoir of a car and a person both labelled INTP

What does it mean when the phrase question and word pair sections of the MBTI point to opposite preferences? How do the phrases and word pairs point towards actual type preferences?

What is it to be conscious, or unconscious for that matter? From a strictly behavioural point of view, this might seem simple enough for research purposes, at least, requiring observation and measurement, setting of appropriate tasks and so on. Experimental psychology and psychological instruments or tests of various kinds are examples of this ath...

At the top of their craft, songwriters have the licence and ability to speak insightful-ly, if sometimes starkly, about life, as experienced by them and by others. Beauty and angst run together in their work. It would be a grave mistake to assess the quality of their output on selected life events and personal peccadilloes. On that basis there woul...

49 Facts, dreams, culture, intimidation…another Jung life Deirdre Bair: Jung: A biography (Little, Brown, 2003) Reviewed by Peter Geyer Part of the enchantment surrounding C G Jung seems to be that many people want to find out about him, and some others are prepared to oblige them with the occasional weighty tome about his life and times from a par...

Part of the enchantment surrounding C G Jung seems to be that many people want to find out about him, and some others are prepared to oblige them with the occasional weighty tome about his life and times from a particular point of view. Read, unread, or dipped into at random, over the years these texts have built up a Jung mythos, appropriate in so...

In June 1996, Peter Geyer travelled to the Center for the Applications of Psychological Type in Gainesville, Florida. There he recorded this interview with Dr Mary McCaulley.

Theorists who study discourses are interested in the social construction of reality through talk and text. The discursive construction of reality occurs at different (though interconnected) levels - from transient and situated instances and episodes oflanguage use (Potter & Wetherell 1987), through to the circulation of durable sets of interrelated...

in their different ways, claimed the label of science for their activities. In each case, the claim was based on a particular understanding of scientific "method." In both cases, neither person was acclaimed as such outside their network of influence. There are many reasons for this. One is that, even after more than a century of effort, the discip...

The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) was developed and constructed to indicate psychological preferences identified by C.G. Jung's typology, and also for its results to be interpreted in the context of Jung's ideas on type dynamics and development. MBTI Form K, a more complex instrument than the standard Forms M and G, focuses on how a person exp...

If I prophesy an avalanche, would you wait, and call my bluff?…….Peter Hammill 1973 In the least developed adults, all four processes remain childish, so that nothing can be maturely perceived or maturely judged. Even in effective adults, the two least-used processes remain relatively childish, and the effectiveness lies in the two processes which...