Interesting “question,” Jason. I like the framing in terms of justification and consistency, as it allows us to see, in clear form, “justification dynamics” at work in the context of justification systems and social influence.

 

There are a number of issues. First, for those who don’t know, Jason and I have a history of dialoguing about the Myers-Briggs Typology. The MBTI is a tool used lots by folks outside of psychology, but inside the field of psych assessment, the measure and system does not get much attention. I think there is a bit of elitist snobbery operating, as I think the MBTI is a useful way to carve up features of the human psyche/human behavioral tendencies. The second technical MBTI issue pertains to whether the theory, questionnaires and related concepts should be thought of in terms of dimensions that people score high, average, or low on, or if they represent genuine essential-type categories. I am happy to revisit that specific question if you would like. But the challenge here was more about types in general and so I will move to that.

I am not opposed to thinking about types in “ordered” folks. Of course, as Alexander alluded to, the “ordered versus disordered” type distinction is fraught with complexity. But I think the idea of a role-model or adaptive personality type has good evidence for it (see attached). In fact, here is a half hour discussion I did with my brother on what is an “adaptive personality type.” It is the “OCEAN” profile of high on the first four of the big five traits and low on the N. I would guess additional research will add “g” (as in general IQ) and perhaps “H” as in honor and humility (and probably humor), to give a “high OCEAN g H” profile for the adaptive “ordered” personality type. (Needless to say the idea of a “high g H floating on an adaptive OCEAN of traits” is appealing to myself as a founding ToKer 😊)

 

I also agree with Alexander’s comment and like animus and anima as archetypes. In terms of personality-human psychology, the Matrix supports an agentic/masculine/self-oriented “type” relative to a communal/feminine/other-oriented type. That is the upper left versus lower right quadrant distinction.

 

Two more points and I will wrap up and you can decide about my being hypocritical. First, if we look at medicine, we do see some justification for thinking more about types when we are looking at disorders than ordered. After all, the disordered is defined by a type of thing that has gone wrong. There are many kinds of kidney diseases, but not too many kinds of normal healthy human kidneys (at least I suspect this to be the case. In saying this, I should note there are some clear examples of normal typology in physiology, like the variety of normal blood types, A, B, O, +/- ). Of course, I argue that mental pathology is importantly different from bio-organic, but that is another issue.

 

Second, if we look at the blog on personality disorders that sparked your comment, I actually take the categorical types and put them on a dimensional system and show that they are rigid extremes of underlying dimensions. So the current case in point is taking an overly categorical system (the DSM personality system) and showing that the supposed essential types are best understood as manifestations of high or low ends of a continuum of underlying relational process dimensions.  

 

Bottom line, the category type versus dimension issue is complicated. And surprisingly enough, given the nature of justification dynamics, I think I need more evidence is required to demonstrate that my arguments are of a “inconsistent” type 😊.

 

Best,

Gregg

 

 

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