Theos-Talk Archives (August 1995 Message tl00170)

At 3:10 PM 8/22/95, K. Paul Johnson wrote:
>This weekend I read GIFTS DIFFERING, the handbook to the
>Myers-Briggs types, and FOUNDATIONS OF PERSONALITY by Karen
>Hamaker-? (forgot what's after the hyphen)

Karen Hamaker-Zondag.

who tries to
>integrate Jung's personality theory with astrology. These are
>two systems in which I have a fair amount of faith, so was
>interested to see them blended. Unfortunately, the author
>seems to derive empirical claims for her theory on a deductive
>basis, but does not test them.

Hi Paul,

Several years ago I took the qualifying workshop in Albequerque NM, I found
it synchronistic that I was attending the workshop during the hot air
championships - beautiful baloons in October. To the point, I think that
Myers-Briggs is a wonderful tool but they are striving to hard to give it
statistical validity and have it accepted as a diagnostic tool. Part of
that problem I think has to do with marketing through CPP in Gainsville,
Florida. The Myers-Briggs Type indicator should not stand alone as a tool
but as a model or a metaphor for looking at typology. It is best understood
from within the paradigm of Psychological Types by C.G. Jung and those who
read that book first will have a better grounding than those who seek to
place the model in a clinical perspective.

>
>She basically starts out by equating the four elements with the
>four functions, viz.: fire=intuition, water=feeling,
>air=thinking, earth=sensation. Then she lays out a way of
>scoring one's natal positions by sign and house and thereby
>measuring the "strength" of the four elements. These relative
>strengths are then presumed to yield one's personality type.
>Neat, huh?

I didn't even know I had the book until you mentioned it and I glanced over
at my bookshelf - another must read:) In my natal chart I come out with 3
Fire signs, 3 Earth Signs, 2 air and 1 one water but it doesn't
understanding come out to INTP. I wonder if the fixedness, cardinal, and
mutable aspects have an effect on all this. My earth is 3 fixed and my fire
is cardinal, fixed and mutable.

>
>The problem is that for me at least, the equations don't work.
>By both sign and house, I'm heavily water-dominated. The
>author would say this makes me a feeling type.

I am not entirely convinced that you do not make evaluations based on the
value of people and the effects any given course has on the human
community (Feeling) in distinction to a more logical and sequential
approach (Thinking). If you will allow a little type watching in public. :)

 But the
>Myers-Briggs (not just the test but the type descriptions)
>clearly have me an INTJ, which is an intuitive type with
>auxiliary thinking. Feeling is unconscious, introverted and
>not at all the predominant function.

This is the problem with the indicator is that it measures how we preceive
ourselves not how we actually are. That explains why at different times and
in different situations you may come out differently. I thought I was a
ENFP because the Test originally scored me as one ten years ago; low and
behold, I am now an INTP (on the model superdupper model of the indicator)
what is that about? I think it is about a change of life and a way of
perceiving myself. The theory is wonderful, who could argue with it, but
the way it can be used is in my estimate frightening. I am speaking as one
who has done workshops on Teaching and Type at inservices and Spirituality
of Type to conferences of ministers.

 The best thing in my estimation is to hold the results loosely but to
study the theory intensely and comprehensively. Too many reverse that
stategy to the misuse of the the model. So to read Hamaker -Zondag and Jung
and Myers-Briggs is more important than to work the statistics out or to
rely to heavily on the test itself.

 I know several water sign
>people who have in common introversion and intuition but none of whom are
>feeling types. This makes me wonder if fire is really feeling
>and water intuition, rather than vice versa.

Someone a little more clued into the elements and how they are used could
help us here I think since water can be associated with either feeling or
intuition as does water.

>
>Has anyone else tried to relate astrology to Jungian types?
>What do you make of the connection?

Arthur Paul Patterson