Hi Jason,

  Interesting question. Let me offer some brief thoughts as a clinical/personality psychologist.

  You are correct that academic psychology is much more heavily invested in the Big Five than the Jungian theory of types. The reason is pretty straightforward. The big five originally emerged largely from an “atheoretical” method, called the lexical hypothesis. The lexical hypothesis was the idea that if there are regular patterns of individual difference, those patterns should show up in adjectives. And, indeed, this was largely found (i.e., a case could be made that there were five large clusters of individual difference). This then evolved into many different interpretations of trait theory.

  Jungian type theory is not favored because the system as a whole is not really well suited to being a science of human psychology. In addition, most personality researchers agree that individual differences are almost all dimensional in their structure. Although there certainly are interesting angles to be considered when it comes to types, most theorists and researchers do not find the MBTI typology very convincing. I do believe that there is value to be gleaned from it, and I can explain how I related to it at some point. But I do agree with the critiques that the categories of the MBTI behave more like dimensions than dichotomies or types.

  Now, jump over to psychopathology and the DSM. First and foremost, the DSM is a PSYCHIATRIC and thus biomedical document. It is modeled off of biomedicine which tends to conceive of diseases as different types.

  Most personality researchers were supportive of a change that was going to be made in the DSM 5, from a type view to a dimension view. The push, described briefly here<https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/theory-knowledge/201305/what-is-dysfunctional-personality>, was to create a dimension of dysfunctional tendencies in identity and relationship and have people be ranked. In terms of empirical/psychometric validity, this is almost certainly a “better view.” But, it was pushed back because it opened up too many other issues. And, I should note, as this blog describes, the personality disorder types do have some conceptual legitimacy<https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/theory-knowledge/201305/what-is-dysfunctional-personality>.

Hope this clarifies some points.
G

From: tree of knowledge system discussion [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of nysa71
Sent: Friday, February 2, 2018 8:39 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Formism and Personality Traits vs. Types

Hello ToK Society,

In our previous discussions of Formism, trait theory / type theory has been brought up.

Personality psychologists in academia typically favor trait theory, (particularly the "Big Five"), and typically reject type theory, (at least as far as I can tell). Trait theory dominates.

However, when you look at abnormal psychology, (particularly the DSM), it's implicitly a type theory...specifically, a categorization of disordered personality types, no?

What's up with that? Why does "mainstream" psychology implicitly seem to be OK with type theory only in a negative sense? That is, perfectly fine with the notion of unhealthy, disordered and maladaptive personality types while rejecting the notion of healthy, ordered and adaptive personality types?

~ Jason Bessey
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