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TYPEF A CE LINKING THE TYPE COMMUNITY
The quarterly magazine of the British Association for Psychological Type
SELECTION OF TYPE ARTICLES IN THIS ISSUE Volume 31 No.3
Summer 2020
TYPEFACE
BRITISH ASSOCIATION FOR PSYCHOLOGICAL TYPE (BAPT) Registered Charity No. 1045772 BAPT, c/o Champleys Accountants, Champleys Mews, Market Place, Pickering YO18 7AE. Email: [email protected] www.bapt.org.uk
BOARD OF TRUSTEES
TYPEFACE TEAM
President & Chair of Board Sarah Perrott (ESFJ) [email protected]
Editor
Director of Events
Assistant Editor
Susan M Nash (ENFJ) [email protected]
Nancy Silcox (ENTJ) [email protected]
Gill Clack (ENFJ) [email protected]
Director of Finance
INTEREST AREA CO-ORDINATORS
Richard Owen (INTJ) [email protected]
Careers & Occupations Christine Rigden (INFP) [email protected]
Director of Member Services Catherine Stothart (INTP) [email protected]
Diversity & Multicultural Issues Paula Aamli (ENTP) [email protected]
Board Secretary Jerry Gilpin (INTJ) [email protected]
Education, Learning & Development David Hodgson (ENFP) [email protected]
WEBMASTER
Psychotherapy & Counselling
Christine Rigden (INFP) [email protected]
POST VACANT Management & Organisational Development
BAPT LOCAL AREA GROUPS
Susan M Nash (ENFJ) [email protected]
MIDLANDS GROUP
Religion & Spirituality
Charles Worth (INFP) [email protected]
Graham Osborne (INTJ) [email protected]
NORTH WEST GROUP (NW TYPE) Manchester Ian Jenner (INFP) & Robin Hills (ENFP) [email protected] & [email protected] Cover Photographs: Collage of Board members: Sarah Perrott, Susan Nash, Richard Owen, Catherine Stothart & Jerry Gilpin (Top) Collage of Regional Group Organisers: Ian Jenner, Charles Worth & Robin Hills (Bottom) (Collages created by Nancy Silcox, Assistant Editor) Cover Design: Salmon Consulting Ltd. Graphic Design: Angelina Bennet. Printing: Lulu
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CONTENTS President’s Column (Sarah Perrott) .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 4
Out of Touch? Work, Home, Existence (Peter Geyer) .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. ..
.. .. 5
Diversity & Multicultural Issues: “Actively Advocating Acceptance” (Paula Aamli) .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 10
Next APT International Conference (APTi) – July 21-24, 2021 – Chicago, Illinois .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 12
Management & OD: “Blended Learning in Today’s World” (Susan Nash)
.. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. … 14
Next Australian APT National Conference – 28-31 October, 2021 – Auckland, New Zealand.. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 17
Religion & Spirituality: “Clergy, the ‘Good Death’ and Psychological Type” (David Knight) .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 18
Theory & Research: “The Concept of Attitude” (Richard Owen) .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 20
Words of Wisdom from the Master! (Carl Jung)
.. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 25
Spotlight on Research (John Hackston) .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 26
Typewatching at the Cinema: “Pandemic, Type and Feelgood Movies
.. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 28
Lockdown – Time for the Couch and the Screen!” (Peter Malone)
Types of Lockdown (Nancy Silcox) .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 30
TypeFace Archive – ‘MILO’ at CAPT .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 32
BAPT Library – A Valuable Resource for You
.. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. ..32
BAPT ‘In Conversation … ‘ Webinars (Richard Owen).. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. ..
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Back Cover
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EDITOR’S NOTE GILL CLACK (ENFJ)
The Summer issue of TypeFace normally includes reports of activities in our Regional Groups with photos of these on the front cover. However, due to the pandemic no workshops have taken place, so I have taken the opportunity instead to feature collages of our Board of Trustees and our three Regional Group leaders against a background of summer flowers. Inside the issue, we commence with our ‘President’s Column’ from Sarah Perrott and, this time, she reports on the discussions the Board have been having regarding its strategy and, in particular, where most effort should be concentrated in terms of delivering on BAPT’s constitutional values. Also, she highlights further peer group support sessions planned during the summer and steps taken to reach out to non-members who are qualified in type. We also have a full programme for the Autumn series of BAPT ‘In Conversation with … ‘ webinars to be led by Richard Owen which are advertised on the back cover of this issue. Do sign up to participate in these as there are some very interesting speakers booked. We have an interesting article from Peter Geyer, a regular contributor from Australia, entitled “Out of Touch? Work, Home, Existence” in which he ponders on a number of issues related to Jung and type theory. For those of us who enjoy Peter’s writing, this is another one to generate a pause for thought. This is followed by four articles which fall into our Interest Area Groups. The first, from Paula Aamli (Diversity & Multicultural Issues), following the Black Lives Matter protests, in her article “Actively Advocating Acceptance” talks about racial inequality and possible bias and how type theory helps our attempts to transcend this. This is followed by Susan Nash (Management & OD) who, very topically, writes about “Blended Learning in Today’s World” which describes a method of teaching that integrates technology and digital media with traditional instructor-led classroom activities, giving students more flexibility to customize their learning experiences in today’s world. We then have an article “Clergy, the ‘Good Death’ and Psychological Type” from David Knight (Religion & Spirituality) which describes his research with clergy looking at whether type theory is connected to the way people describe how they see a ‘good death’. The fourth article is from Richard Owen entitled “The Concept of Attitude”, which I have put in the Theory & Research column, where he takes a fresh look at Jung’s writing on this aspect of his type theory. Next we have our regular “Spotlight on Research” in which John Hackston outlines some of the research articles that have been published recently taking a world theme, covering the use of MBTI® assessment in improving self-acceptance, self-esteem and acceptance of others; self-knowledge and positive team behaviours; type differences in giving presentations; preferred teaching methods of different types, and type and tourism. A real spread of subject matter this time. Then comes Peter Malone’s latest film review where he discusses feel good movies released in this time of lockdown “Swimming with Men”, “Fisherman’s Friends”, “Military Wives” and “Love Sarah” which viewers seem to have gravitated towards rather than apocalyptic films which might have been expected. Our last article is the latest in Nancy Silcox’s regular ‘Types of … ‘ series where this time she discusses “Types of Lockdown” and how those with different type preferences might react to the restrictions being imposed. She has also included a number of really witty comments which are well worth reading. Then we have our usual regular short piece of Words of Wisdom from the Master. Finally, may I draw your attention to the revised date for the next APT International (APTi) Conference which had to be postponed due to the coronavirus and will now be held in Chicago from July 21-24, 2021, and, similarly, the date of the Australian International Type Conference will now be held in Auckland. New Zealand from 28 to 31 October, 2021. GILL EDITORIAL & ADVERTISING POLICY FOR TYPEFACE Publication of an advertisement in TypeFace is not an endorsement by BAPT of the advertiser of the product or service offered. Potential advertisers should contact the Editor for a list of prices and discounts for multiple insertions. No part of TypeFace may be reproduced in any manner without written permission from BAPT. Write to the Editor in the first instance. Myers-Briggs Type Indicator® and MBTI® are registered trademarks of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator Trust in the United States and other countries.
DEADLINE FOR CONTRIBUTIONS FOR AUTUMN 2020 ISSUE: 1st OCTOBER 2020
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PRESIDENT’S COLUMN SARAH PERROTT (ESFJ) President
Sarah Perrott works as a consultant and executive coach with individuals, teams and groups. She has been working with Type for 18 years and is passionate about enabling others to flourish. She is APECS accredited with an MSc in Coaching & Behavioural Change, FCIPD and BPS accredited, licensed NLP practitioner and licensed HeartMath coach. Email: [email protected]
Our hope is that this edition of TypeFace will provide an opportunity for quiet enjoyment and reflection over your summertime. Whatever you may be doing and whether holidays are happening as staycations or away-cations. There has been a lot happening in BAPT following on from the great success of the online Conference. The Board decided to take time to reconsider the focus and outreach of BAPT. Also to look afresh at our constitution and review where we should be placing our efforts to both serve the Type community and honour and fulfil the constitution. The BAPT Board is having additional strategy Board meetings to look at this in great depth. We are very pleased to have Jerry Gilpin as the new Board member as Secretary to the Board. Jerry brings both a fresh perspective and thoughtful approach to our conversations on strategy and the future. One of his many areas of talent and expertise. Jerry suggested that BAPT join NCVO, National Council for Voluntary Organisations. This will provide a source of useful supporting information for BAPT as a charity and give us access and exposure to a wider network of volunteer organisations. We have identified four values which we are ethical, inclusive, accessible, and sustainable. We are continuing to work on the wording of the full meaning of these values and will share that with you as we progress.
Catherine Stothart, our Membership Secretary, sent out a member’s survey to the BAPT membership in May/June. This was to collect thoughts and views to feed into our strategy discussions. 116 surveys were sent out and we received 22 responses. The response from our membership on what they want from BAPT fall into two categories. These two categories are networking and learning. It was stated as very important to have the opportunity to meet in person with people and discuss how they use Type. Also learning and having either cheap or free resources that could be used in their Type practice both work and personally. Within this 44
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area of learning to have the opportunity of attending master classes and doing a deep dive into different areas of Type. A couple of quick reminders to you. In order to provide the opportunity and space for Type practitioners to both network and learn we have five further Type Practitioner Peer Support sessions set up over the Summer and into the Autumn. The first of these was on Tuesday 14th July 18.00 for an hour. Please do register through the website for these virtual zoom meetings. We have a list of Type practitioners on our website. So please do access the members’ area and set up your profile as a Type practitioner if you have not already done so. It has been known for people looking for someone to administer their Type profile to get names from this list!
Whilst focusing on developing our strategy we are also engaging in a renewed reach out to those qualified to administer Type. We have a webinar scheduled on 8th October 2020 which will be hosted by APECS, Association for Professional Executive Coaching and Supervision. Catherine Stothart will be running this webinar and the topic is on ‘Insight into Interaction Styles’. Catherine is doing this under the BAPT logo. The topline publicity for this is: If you are Type trained (MBTI®) this is an opportunity to deepen your knowledge and understanding and have a new tool using a different lens on Type to apply in your coaching practice. Look out for the registration link later in the year. We have started a conversation with EMCC, The European Mentoring and Coaching Council and are hopeful of running something similar. Ideally this session on interactions styles would be the first of a series. Others to include temperament, ethics on use of Type and other topics. Our intention is to encourage further engagement and deeper learning about Type with those who are trained and keen to grow their knowledge, and hopefully participation with BAPT, our Conference and the events. Hoping that you and those you care about remain safe and well and do enjoy the rest of TypeFace.
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OUT OF TOUCH? WORK, HOME, EXISTENCE PETER GEYER (INTP)
Peter Geyer researches, writes and (occasionally) speaks about psychological type and personality in general. He used to accredit people in type instruments, successfully making up his own. A life member of AusAPT and an APTi lifetime member, he is currently custodian of the Psychological Type Research Archive. His current interests are in what people like C.G. Jung really said and did, and consciousness, personality, language and society. Email: [email protected]
When a man champions or advocates a cause, negative thinking makes no inquiry as to the importance of the thing, but merely asks “how much does he make by it?”
“Man is what he eats” etc. also. The destructive quality of this thinking as well as its occasional and limited usefulness, hardly need further elucidation. C.G. Jung 1. Expected/Unexpected/Denied What constitutes good thinking, however defined, let alone good judgement or decent appraisal? When C.G. Jung described thinking in terms of a basic psychological functioning, he also wrote about negative thinking and theosophical thinking, neither of which he considered helpful, although some of his current followers might demur regarding his opinion of the latter. Perhaps what Jung was getting at is that preferring thinking, as with any other basic psychological function he identified, says nothing about the facility of its use, regardless of education or socio-political status. If, as he posited, there are people who are neither extraverts nor introverts, then it’s about psychological unconsciousness rather than something like ambiversion – a behavioural interpretation in any case. This would apply regardless of any result from a type questionnaire. Accordingly, an issue may be not so much a typological one-sidedness (e.g. Steve Myers, 2019) as one of psychological consciousness, in Jung’s terms. A lack of differentiation between thinking and feeling, or any of the opposites might be the problem; this comes before onesidedness, which would presume differentiation. In this way, the current situation, in all its manifestations, can be better understood, at least if you use a type lens or like what Jung says. Pandemic examples might include the Australian tendency for stockpiling toilet paper in world
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-heading proportions, which possibly has a viable Freudian interpretation, or people heading to the beach in droves might be better understood in this way.
A countervailing factor is sources of information and trust – culture, family, media, belief system etc. This allows an American citizen to associate wearing a face mask with “tyranny” when engaged by a television reporter. A person awaiting the Rapture would be expected to have a different perspective to those not anticipating such an event and to make judgements accordingly. Another person, attuned instead to neoliberal ideas about the economy and society might make different judgements, or even the same ones, but for different reasons. In his history of American Transcendentalism (2008), Philip Gura observes that two different approaches to society arose from this movement: one emphasising the individual; the other the person in society. The scientist and novelist Alan Lightman writes that Galileo’s observations with his telescope were highly contentious for several reasons. Some were theological, and others were opposed “because they challenged personal worldviews and philosophical commitments” (2018). Looking through his device was also too much to consider. One of the dilemmas of contemporary life is that social media and related contacts, or even a television service, can comprise a person’s major source of information whereby opinions of various kinds can be expressed in praise or blame regarding a topic, an idea, or a person, without engaging with previously accepted social niceties, or type preferences for that matter. This isn’t simply an issue for trolls or bots, but also for celebrities and influencers who appear to operate on an unconscious level. Politicians and their advisers appear to cluster together on policies and perspectives, including those regarding people, to whom they might appear less than agreeable. In classical Greece, sophistry was valued in a debate and facts incidental to an outcome. One can be logical without attending to facts, known or otherwise.
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TYPEFACE irrelevant or normal – I later encountered these methods when teaching something called Strategic Management 301, a very stressful interlude as it also explained how things operated in my area of expertise.
What do we do with knowledge that we cannot bear to deal with? What do we do with the things we do not want to know?
We were on the run from the lies concealed in the language
Deborah Levy
of politics, from myths about our character and our purpose in life
Barbara Graziosi (2019), in explaining Homer, mentions there have been those who praised him and his work without having read a word, or being able to do so. The Odyssey features Ulysses, a hero of sorts, who appears a cunning man, mean and tricky perhaps, whose duplicities appeared admirable to whoever Homer was and his audience.
Deborah Levy Recently, a piece written by Jennifer Fayard (2020) appeared in Psychology Today that illustrated this dilemma. In some ways it’s a conversion narrative that begins with the MBTI®, stops off briefly at the Enneagram, and finally arrives at the Five-Factor Model, where the world can be set to rights. In short, a pleasant encounter and identification (INTJ) led her, perhaps unwisely, to the internet, where she discovered with some horror that the same label had been applied to Draco Malfoy, an unpleasant character in the Harry Potter stories. There are other problems with her narrative (Geyer 2020a).
These days, a similar kind of trickster behaviour appears on various stages of world events, expressed nonetheless by people of various kinds and from various places. Jung writes that being able to bluff well can be a way to success, such that “pretence is sometimes just as successful as actual performance.” Readers can select from their own regimes. Then again, perhaps browsing Carlo Cipolla’s words about stupidity is in order (2019).
Matilda Boseley has reported her lockdown reading included a 5,000 word ENFJ description, noting “I share this personality with Oprah Winfrey and Pope John Paul II. Apparently” (2020). No source was provided. Perhaps 5,000 words might be too many and provide a number of exceptions, apart from any dispute over the types of the people mentioned.
C.G. Jung thought people with extraverted intuition in the priority were likely to be politicians, amongst other possibilities, without giving supporting examples. The field of politics, however, appears to be populated by other types, particularly those opposite in some way to Jung’s speculation, notwithstanding continual calls for a vision from this group although this may not be an intuitive prospect. A person who attended a team workshop I ran a long time ago, thought the “big picture” was about who you knew, not any insight, profound or otherwise.
Sometimes a one word description can be bad enough. Not long ago, I ventured to a particular website at the suggestion of a colleague who surfs the somewhat dangerous waters of type online. This one provided a questionnaire, most of which I didn’t want to answer, and descriptions. One word was also assigned to each code, an unfortunately common practice I find misleading. INTPs were labelled Engineers, the experience of the anonymous site owners, suggesting a sheltered life without musicians, artists, philosophers, psychologists and historians.
Jung’s friend and colleague H.G. Baynes apparently thought Adolf Hitler an extraverted intuitive. Isabel Myers, writing in 1945, thought him an introverted intuitive. Mentioning this in MBTI® Accreditation courses, my version of fun, provoked mixed results, ranging from shock to seeing how that might be the case. Suggesting feeling types can prosecute wars because of their values, e.g. Tony Blair, also led to some insights. An ENFP female consultant of my acquaintance had no problem with her organisation’s focus on downsizing.
There are many different kinds of engineer, but I’ve rarely encountered an INTP as one although I accept they exist and may be in numbers in places like Silicon Valley or other allegedly nerdish habitats. Published Type Tables suggest INTPs may be over-represented in various engineering fields, without being either the modal type or a significant proportion of samples (Schaubhut & Thompson 2008).
Of course Hitler’s type is speculation, and no-one knows, but having the same type code as someone else, or wishing they did (or didn’t) can be problematic. The late Otto Kroeger told me he was once asked what he thought the type preferences were of then US President George H.W. Bush. After being provided with some information, he concluded Bush preferred INFP, resulting in an avalanche of correspondence from aggrieved people of that type. His response was that this was what the data suggested, whether people liked it or not.
There’s an element of personality, in all its manifestations, that is simply fun, where Draco Malfoy as an INTJ, however personally unconvincing, gets a nod and a laugh, even from INTJs, although others might be offended. People are funny, in their own way, but that doesn’t mean being laughed at is a life -enhancing experience.
Many years ago, I read an interview with a politician who had just become leader of his party, in opposition. He sounded very much like my type, which appalled me, as I didn’t like his party and their policies at all. Still, there was the information, which I had to consider. Bill Gates was also not wanted in my code (I have no idea of his type, others are more certain) because I detested his business practices, which to others were either
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I can’t fall apart because I’ve never fallen together Deborah Levy Sometimes who you are, problematic in itself, gets mixed up with, or is even in conflict with who you discover you’re sup66 6
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TYPEFACE posed to be. An aspect of this dilemma, compellingly written by Deborah Levy, is provided without engaging in labels of any kind (2013).
Dan Lyons, covering a broader field which includes these entities (2019) describes what appears to be genuine bewilderment at emotional responses to being sacked, or whatever jargon term is used. This partly reminded me of an INTP man in his early 40s, who said to the group he was in at the time that he didn’t “get feeling” and was quite dismissive of the idea. Having said that, he didn’t appear to have the reverence for money that the subjects of these two books appeared to have. Personally, I fail to understand how someone can become a billionaire when their company isn’t making money, which appears to be a theme, and their employees are poorly paid and quickly disposed of. Perhaps this can be seen as onesidedness. There are other words.
Rebecca Holman wishes to present a view that people like her can be managers, or in charge in some way (2017). She takes a labelling path, calling quieter, less directive people like her “Beta” (presumably pronounced “better”) as opposed to “Alpha” – that being a term usually applied to males, but in this case includes some women. One might think of Sheryl Sandberg, amongst others.
Recently, a bank informed its customers that minimum monthly payments would be reduced in order to help people in financial difficulty, neglecting to consider that, as the interest rate remained unchanged, many would plunge further into debt. Sometime last century, a person licensed to accredit people to purchase and use the MBTI®, purportedly said to a group that he’d just handed them ”a licence to print money” which startled me as I’d never seen it that way and over the years I rarely encountered type users overflowing with wealth. A report on personality inventories that demonises the MBTI® suggests many people use it because they want to get their money back from their training investment, which seems both illogical and an example of Jung’s negative thinking (Bozarth 2019; Geyer 2020b).
Taking her cue from the apparent ideas of consultant Eddie Erlandson, Holman presents these as a spectrum – analogous in some ways, but not in others to extraversion and introversion, spending the book discussing this work dilemma with others while dancing around her own anxieties or unhappiness regarding what I would see as toxic ideas about managing people. A key thought herein from some quarters is that you have to “fake it until you make it” bringing to mind Jung’s comments about bluffing. “Success” in this context seems an unhappy place for everyone concerned.
This can be problematic, though. Even if you take type seriously enough and use it to help people, in or out of organisations, your clients may not take it seriously or they might expect they can find a life partner with a specific label. There might also be a presumption that acquiring a label will solve various problems, particularly deep-seated ones. Finding out how you’re different, a pleasant discovery to some, including me, can also be an alienating experience in the wrong circumstances, including amongst those familiar with the labels.
For Caroline Zielinski, striving to be nice at work is overrated (2020); Naoise Dolan thinks she’s not good at presenting herself as likeable (Cain 2020). The psychology of happiness and how it ignores women is a theme for Ariel Gore in a book which combines two streams of research – academic and a women’s group she established – with other material from her experience and reading (2020). I would add that happiness studies and positive psychology in general also privilege extraversion and societal norms and expectations. Some of that comes through in the responses from individual journals from her group. The idea of flow attracts Gore and she also accepts the idea of happiness as an aim, rather than discounting it altogether. It’s about how women can be themselves in what is considered a patriarchal society, not a phrase I’m completely comfortable with, but I can’t dispute its veracity.
2. Recurring Issues History is a process, not a locked box with a collection of facts inside. The past and present are always in dialogue –
there can hardly be history without revisionism. Hilary Mantel One can also be logical without attending to truth, or seeking it out. It can be convenient to say that history is written by the victors without troubling to research that proposition. There are plenty of exceptions. Sometimes this has to do with a flawed premise, whether it be about the way people are, the nature of differences between them, or what was presumed to have happened in the past.
In fact, if you want to see the patriarchy in action, or at least a version of it, then a trip to Silicon Valley is a must. Noam Cohen (2017) writes about key players in its history and development, loosely described as free-market libertarians who aren’t particularly interested in how people feel, or giving them decent working conditions.
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Recently, the Australian Prime Minister claimed both an interest in history (e.g. ancestors on the First and Second Fleets) and that there was never any slavery in Australia (Thalia An77 7
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contexts of decades past, applied not only to an Amazon workplace but also to the notion that people should always be occupied, doing something. This latter view seems to be cultural; the Irish nuns who taught me said idle hands were the Devil’s handiwork and I’ve always wondered whether this was at least partly an injunction not to reflect too much because you don’t know where that will take you.
Marilyn Lake and Henry Reynolds write persuasively about the Anzac myth and legend and the militarisation of Australian history (2010) while Mugambi Jouet (2017) articulates encounters with the idea of American exceptionalism within and without the United States, a country recently referred to as “the American experiment” by some commentators, who decline to expound on what that means, perhaps because everyone should know.
A woman in my courses came out ENFJ on the MBTI® but validated INFP. Extremely well educated and from a European background, she was obsessed with keeping occupied and being ordered. I asked her what would happen if all this activity stopped and she replied “Disaster!”
Karen E. and Barbara J. Fields write articulately about what they call “racecraft” (2014) – a pertinent background to understanding how and why black lives in the United States and other various countries are more precarious and dangerous. Several indigenous and non-European Australians have recently articulated their experiences in this context, to the visible discomfort of some who seem to wish to avoid doing anything about obvious inequalities.
Jenny Odell recommends doing nothing, perhaps observing what’s around (birds are a favourite), as a means of countering what she calls the attention economy. Personally a creative man can be an introvert, but in his work he is an extravert and vice versa. C.G. Jung Much of the discussion around working from home has revolved around extraversion and introversion, variously interpreted, and under various contexts, such as living with partner and/or children, home-schooling and the like. Gary Nunn (2020) and Max Benwell (2020) describe different aspects of these ideas, while Brigid Delaney (2020) discloses she rented an office even when unemployed, so she could be with other people.
3. Workplaces As mentioned earlier, inequalities of various kinds exist in the workplace, whether it be wages, sexual harassment, job insecurity and so on. Dan Lyons observes that the “gig” economy isn’t a general desire for Millennials and that a higher percentage of them than earlier generational groups desire security of employment and other benefits. Typologically, this should not really be news, yet the casualisation of Western economies and the gap between rich and poor continues apace, as has happened for the past 30 years or more. A number of workers have recently been described as “heroes” even applauded for doing their work. This seems to be at the expense of actually providing appropriate funding and work conditions, notably in Britain’s NHS (Anonymous, 2020; Higgins, 2020). Karlie Brogan (2020), working elsewhere, thinks it insincere, a judgement that can readily be applied to other words and contexts, particularly notions of “we’re all in this together” expressed from certain quarters previously known for more divisive reasons.
As a shy introvert, I found this interesting, as although I enjoy my own company and am comfortable in a home office, I liked working with others in offices, at least in part because these people were there and I didn’t have to work hard to seek out company. It was good for discussing ideas and other things as well. So to leave and work from a home office was actually a difficult decision, the loss of reliable income also being a factor.
4. Home/Work The word Zoom gives me the heebie-jeebies
Rain Francis The coronavirus epidemic has resulted in both a loss of jobs and also more people working from home, assisted by various technologies, or at least the presumption of them being of assistance. Questions about productivity have arisen and various methods of work have been suggested, including rigorously structuring the work day, or even dressing up as though you are at a workplace with others (Williams, 2020).
The best writing has come from Luke Smillie and Nick Haslam from the University of Melbourne (2020) who are no fans of the MBTI®, but nonetheless knowledgeable on personality.
All of these date back several decades as presumptions necessarily driving doing proper work, i.e. order and time. None of them are necessarily relevant to actually completing anything worthwhile. Admittedly that’s my experience running a home office for many years; it may not be others. Productivity also appears to be a concretised construct still trapped in Tayloristic
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The introvert makes the mistake of always wanting to relate action to the subjective psychology of the extravert, while the extravert can only conceive the inner mental life as a product of external circumstances.
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TYPEFACE Some References:
Philip F. Gura (2008) American Transcendentalism: A History Hill and Wang
Anonymous (2020) I’m an NHS doctor – and I’ve had enough of people clapping for me
Charlotte Higgins (2020) Why we shouldn't be calling our healthcare workers “heroes”
The Guardian May 21
The Guardian May 27
Thalia Anthony and Stephen Gray (2020) Was there slavery in Australia? Yes. It shouldn’t even be up for debate
Rebecca Holman (2017) Beta: Quiet Girls Can Run The World. There is more than one way to be the boss Coronet
The Guardian June 11 Claire Armistead (2019) Hilary Mantel: “History is a process, not a locked box”
Elle Hunt (2020) Why its good to be bored The Guardian May 3
The Guardian. September 21
Mugambi Jouet (2017) Exceptional America: What Divides Americans From The World And From Each Other California
Max Benwell (2020) Smug introvert or urban escape artist? Find out your pandemic personality
C.G. Jung (1923) Psychological Types Harcourt & Brace (Intro and trans H.G.Baynes)
The Guardian May 27
C.G. Jung (1973/5) Letters: Vol 1: 1906-1950; Vol 2: 1951-1961 Princeton Selected and edited by Gerhard Adler in collaboration with Aniela Jaffe. Translations from the German by R.F.C. Hull.
Matilda Boseley (2020) Does TikTok Count?
The Guardian June 13 Jane Bozarth (2019) Personality Inventories: Fiction, Fact, Future www.LearningGuild.com
Marilyn Lake and Henry Reynolds (2010) What’s Wrong With Anzac? The Militarisation of Australian History (w. Mark McKenna and Joy Damousi) New South
Karleigh Frisbie Brogan (2020) Calling Me a Hero Only Makes You Feel Better: I work in a grocery store. All this grandiose praise rings insincere. The Atlantic April 18
Deborah Levy (2013) Things I Don’t Want To Know: A Response to George Orwell’s essay Why I Write. Notting Hill Editions
Mikey Cahill (2020) Dancer zooms out of her heebie-jeebies The Age June 25 p13
Alan Lightman (2018) Searching For Stars On An Island In Maine Corsair
Sian Cain (2020) Interview: Naoise Dolan: '”I'm not good at presenting myself as likeable”
Dan Lyons (2019) Lab Rats: Why Modern Work Makes People Miserable Atlantic
The Guardian April 19 Carlo M. Cipolla (2019) The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity (Fwd Nassim Nicholas Taleb) W.H. Allen
Isabel Briggs Myers (1943-1980) various Audiotapes and Papers (Private Collection)
Noam Cohen (2017) The Know-it-Alls: The Rise of Silicon Valley as a Political Powerhouse and Social Wrecking Ball Oneworld
Steve Myers (2019) Myers-Briggs Typology vs Jungian Individuation: Overcoming One-Sidedness in Self and Society Routledge
Brigid Delaney (2020) I love being in an office so much that when I was unemployed I paid for one The Guardian May 29
Gary Nunn (2020) Introverts vs extroverts: How opposite personality types are handling lockdown
Jennifer Fayard (2020) False Portraits Psychology Today January 2020
The Age May 3 Jenny Odell (2019) How To Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy Black Inc.
Karen E. and Barbara J. Fields (2014) Racecraft: The Soul of Inequality in American Life Verso
Nancy A. Schaubhut and Richard C. Thompson (eds) (2008) MBTI® Type Tables for Occupations CPP
Peter Geyer (2018) Building a Type Library 7: Psychological Types APTi (forthcoming)
Luke Smillie and Nick Haslam (2020) Personalities that thrive in isolation and what we can all learn from time alone The Conversation April 9
Peter Geyer (2020a) Media Puzzle: Responding to Claims about the MBTI® and Psychological Type AusAPT Type Research and Practice Collection Occasional Papers (#1 – January 2020) www.ausapt.org.au
Sue Williams (2020) Why getting dressed up to work from home matters The Age Domain April 12
Peter Geyer (2020b) Face Value Only? A Review of Personality Inventories: Fiction, Fact, Future, by Jane Bozarth (2019) AusAPT Type Research and Practice Collection Occasional Papers (#2 – April 2020) www.ausapt.org.au
Caroline Zielinski (2020) Why striving to be liked in the workplace is overrated The Age March 4 Note: Referenced articles from Psychology Today, The Age, The Atlantic, The Conversation and The Guardian are available online, or from Peter Geyer. Quotes from C.G. Jung are from his Letters and also Psychological Types.
Ariel Gore (2020) F*ck Happiness: How the science of psychology ignores women Nero Barbara Graziosi (2019) Homer: A Very Short Introduction Oxford
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DIVERSITY & MULTICULTURAL ISSUES ACTIVELY ADVOCATING ACCEPTANCE PAULA AAMLI (ENTP) Interest Area Co-ordinator
Paula Aamli (ENTP) is an HR professional with a degree in Modern History, 8 years’ work experience in the charity sector and 16 years in banking. She has a particular interest in the theory and practice surrounding development tools and techniques as well as the principles of fair and balanced professional assessment. Paula’s professional focus is on leadership and people development; talent management; client relationship management; general management, and HR strategy. Email: [email protected].
As I sit here, in late June 2020, it seems impossible – and rightly so, I think – to write anything on the topic of diversity without also attempting to acknowledge and address the Black Lives Matter protests, that have welled up internationally since George Floyd, a 46year-old black man, was killed by police officers in Minneapolis on 25th May, 2020. I was comforted and relieved, therefore, in turning to the Myers-Briggs Company website, to find that CEO Jeff Hayes has posted a blog, in mid-June as the official memorials for Floyd were coming to a close. In this blog, Hayes reflects on his personal position and commitments and his aspirations for changes within the company in the light of what he is not afraid to call out as yet more evidence of “institutionalized racial inequality”. Hayes’ call-for-action applies across four domains of influence. Two of these domains were, in a sense, generic, namely, the call to take individual personal accountability and to pay due attention to the culture and values of the company, as any corporate or institution should do: We must fully examine ourselves and open our minds to how we can contribute to a more inclusive, equitable and safe world for all people of color. While I know I will never experience the injustices faced by Black people, I will stand in solidarity with them. We must act, as individuals and as a company. (Hayes, 2020, n.p.n.). The other two domains relate specifically to the company’s structure and business focus: As a company rooted in providing insights to promote self-awareness, break down communication barriers, and help people to appreciate the differences of others, we believe in the power of seeking to understand. As a member of the B Corp community, we stand firmly in support of equality and racial and social justice. (2020, n.p.n.).
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The B Corp designation is a commitment to a blended organisational mission, in which pursuit of profit is aligned with a deeper sense of purpose, and with explicit commitments to social and environmental goals. It makes every sense that a B Corp would call out racism, would examine its own record and behaviour in the light of new challenges, and would commit to change. Finally, the Myers Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI)® explicitly aims to foster understanding, of self and of others, and to offer insights that can help to bridge divisions and differences, and there has been a long-standing concern within the overall Myers Briggs® community to foster positive uses of the tool and to counter and prevent misguided, inappropriate or negative uses. Revisiting the Myers Briggs Company’s ethical guidelines for use of the MBTI®, I am reminded that I must: Guideline 3: Be adamant that all types are valuable; Guideline 4: Describe preference and types in non-judgmental terms at all times, [being] aware of how [my] own type biases may influence [my] words; [and that] Guideline 7: …Type should not encourage stereotyping or be used to put people in rigid categories. (Ethical guidelines, n.d., n.p.n., emphasis original). The guidance insists that the MBTI® is for development and not for evaluation and this insistence remains necessary. In our predominantly capitalist workplace cultures, the management habit is often still very Taylorian, i.e. attempting to optimise work tasks for efficiency by chopping activities into small separate repeatable actions and by closely measuring attributes and outputs in order to differentiate, rank and assign value to all aspects of company performance. This tendency to want to measure, differentiate – and reward (or punish) – explains the need for ongoing vigilance by facilitators to ensure fair and appropriate use of MBTI® in practice. Issues of conscious and unconscious forms of bias, and the ways in which structures as well as
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TYPEFACE individual choice can skew outcomes add further layers of challenge. I discover afresh that the guidance, which I initially take to be a statement of the obvious, is not always straightforward to apply. The threads – of individual personality, of specific company culture, of racial biases at personal level and encoded into our management structures – are often tangled together. Take for example, the overall critical article in the New York Times, August 2019, the main theme of which was to suggest that using the MBTI® would have the effect of undermining corporate inclusivity, rather than improving it (although the article acknowledges that the ethical framing of the MBTI® design does intend to foster acceptance and understanding):
ple – than for others, and that the fact of introducing an MBTI® assessment, if not briefed otherwise, carefully and repeatedly, can be deployed to add to a sense of alienation, irrespective of the fact that the tool was not designed with this intent in mind.
Not only was I the sole black woman in the organization, a demographic notoriously misunderstood in the workplace, I now had [been] outed as an introvert, in the company of extroverts … I was the only INTJ among my co-workers and I began to question if I was a good fit for the organization
It’s also too easy to think that challenging along one dimension of inequality is automatically net-beneficial in addressing discrimination of all forms – this isn’t the case, although it is true that having learnt to see discrimination from one perspective, it should be possible, by analogy, to learn how to look carefully for and more quickly recognise signs of inequality elsewhere.
While the MBTI®, and the organizations that use the assessment, promote the idea that there’s no “wrong” personality, real-life workplace conflicts do not always play out so objectively. (Jackson-Wright, 2019, n.p.n.)
Those of us who bring culturally coded advantages with us into the workplace may not know – we really don’t know – how our office environment might feel to others who do not have access to the same benefits. This is why it is counterproductive (causes harm) to launch into explanations of how it’s not really like that, because chances are that it is like that – for them.
Mary Mellor (1997) writes about the potential overlap (and potential tensions) between gender activists and environmental activists. Following Patricia Hill Collins, she argues that being pushed to the edge of the dominant economic structures, whilst damaging and excluding, also gives people at the margins the chance to see certain key dynamics with fresh eyes and from that stance, to be able to imagine alternatives that could be beneficial for all. She writes that: “In [Patricia Hill] Collins’ terms, women are ‘outsiders-within’ ([Black Feminist Thought], 1990) in the construction of society-against-nature… [illustrating] the material dilemma of human embodiment.” (Mellor, 1997, p. 174). In this context, “human embodiment” refers to the position that human beings have emerged from and are part of the wider biological world (she separately links this to the urgent need to protect the natural world which we as humans also depend on for survival). She then goes on, “[And] the impact of human embodiment is … equally illustrated by class, race and colonial exploitation.” (p.175). Here the (passing) reference to other forms of exploitation is Mellor taking a stand that feminist concerns with gender equality should be seen as one example of many discriminations, rather than as being somehow special or preeminent, which is sometimes the position taken.
The threads of the narrative twist around each other … management style, office configuration, perceptions of a black employee, a black female employee, and the stated workplace preference for extraversion, which is linked in turn to perceived career outcomes for extraverts versus introverts in American corporate culture. Based on the story alone, it’s impossible to identify with certainty the deciding factor in the writer’s alienated experience, if indeed it was ever down to “just one thing” (and to be fair, Jackson-Wright also resists an simplistic conclusion). What does seem clear, to me, is that structural bias makes corporate life harder for some people – and some groups of peo-
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Having, then, acknowledged that these issues are present and far from straightforward, so that our actions (and our professional input as facilitators of the MBTI®) can play into relationships and structures in ways we would not intend or endorse – how to proceed from here? I take encouragement from the education scholar and poet Carl Leggo, who early in his academic career, wrote an article which was basically a long list of “questions I need to ask before I advise my students to write in their own voices” (1991). I recognise that we are moving into tricky – but essential – terrain. I try to think about all the ways in which our dialogue could go inadvertently awry, the questions I need to ask myself about ways in which response categories within the in-
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TYPEFACE strument could need some interpretative attention, or in which individuals may feel constrained from actively choosing their actual Type preferences, or in which Type could be misused within wider structures of discrimination. I recommit myself to the unending practice of close listening, and I inwardly pledge to seek to understand more than to be understood, setting down the self-justifications I am tempted to use to explain away any possible “mis-steps”. And then, equipped with these intentions and knowing in advance that I will fail and fall and need at times to apologise and adjust – I proceed. References: Ethical Guidelines (n.d.) Retrieved from https:// www.myersbriggs.org/myers-and-briggs-foundation/ethical-
use-of-the-mbti-instrument/ethical-guidelines.htm Hayes, J. (2020, June 12). Black lives matter [Blogpost]. Retrieved from https://www.themyersbriggs.com/en-US/ Connect-with-us/Blog/2020/June/Black-Lives-Matter Jackson-Wright, Q. (2019, August 22). Promote inclusivity, stay away from personality assessments. New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/22/smarterliving/inclusivity-diversity-personality-assessements-myersbriggs.html Leggo, C. (1991). Questions I need to ask before I advise my students to write in their own voices. Rhetoric Review, 10(1), 143–152. Mellor, M. (1997). Feminism & ecology. Cambridge: Polity Press Ltd.
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MANAGEMENT AND ORGANISATIONAL DEVELOPMENT BLENDED LEARNING IN TODAY’S WORLD SUSAN M NASH (ENFJ) Interest Area Co-ordinator Susan Nash is owner of EM-Power, Inc., author of over 11 books, nine on Whole Type, and a global speaker on psychological type and its applications in improving selfunderstanding, communication, leadership and team effectiveness. She has been a President of APT International (APTi) and was the winner of the 2017 APTi President’s award.
Email: [email protected].
Blended learning is a common approach used in management and leadership development programmes. Traditionally, blended learning describes a method of teaching that integrates technology and digital media with traditional instructor-led classroom activities, giving students more flexibility to customize their learning experiences. In today’s world, I believe blended learning increasingly encompasses a higher quantity of live virtual learning events as well as shorter (if at all) in-person workshops. The key criteria is that the live virtual sessions are interactive with constant two-way dialogue and activities. We are not referring here to recorded or large one-way webinars. There are three key design principles to consider when designing, developing, and delivering effective blended learning experiences. 1. What is the core content to be taught (the Task element of the learning)? •
Knowledge
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Skills
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Techniques
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Theories
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Models
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Concepts
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What is the “Tipping Point” when you believe you need to hold a live inperson session?
2. How will you engage the group in live virtual workshop format (the Group Process element of learning)? •
What platform would you select and why?
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What activities can you use?
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To what extent can you adapt in-person activities to interactive virtual exercises?
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How will you manage large group discussions?
3. How will you structure the overall learning experience - curriculum?
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Length of sessions
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Number of participants
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Frequency of sessions
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Structure of participants (in a “class” or random)
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Content to be used in in-person session
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TYPEFACE 1. CORE CONTENT/TASK Over the past three years (and with the enhancement of features in programs such as Zoom and Google Meet), I have been able to cover more and more content using virtual delivery. This saves considerable travel costs and expenses, while also enabling learning to be staggered so that individuals can internalize one concept before trying to learn another. Knowledge, techniques, concepts, and theories can be introduced very effectively in virtual workshops, and then live sessions can be used to practise specific skills and approaches in more depth. We discovered the Tipping Point (the moment where you know you need people in a room!) when rolling out a Global Trainer Certification Programme. This programme incorporated five regions, 13 virtual modules, and one five-day in-person session. We identified the Tipping Point was when we introduced in-depth coaching skills – the group needed this content to be practised in-depth in the five-day workshop. To enable time for practising and applying ideas and skills, we have used the Must Know, Should Know, Could Know framework to prioritize the key content to be included in virtual or in-person workshops so that there is time for engagement throughout. 2. ENGAGE THE GROUP/GROUP PROCESS Platform
Currently (and this information changes almost every day!) the two platforms in which you can use 16 tiles/cameras are Google Meet and 49 tiles on Zoom (although this number tends to be ineffective for interactive learning). Currently Microsoft Teams only shows 5 – although there are plans for more. Tiles and slides are important for virtual interactive sessions. Other things to consider are the extent to which you want to share Files (better on Google Meet as everything is shared from the Google Drive) or more breakout sessions, whiteboards, and polls (Zoom). Then, as with in-person active learning workshops, there are two main ways to engage the audience: •
Activities
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Holding group discussions in plenary format
It seems like each of these two categories requires conscious planning and preparation in the virtual setting. Activities Activities that work in the live setting may not work virtually, e.g. Open Space activities. (Open Space describes a process where flip charts are posted around the room with one question/comment relevant to a specific topic per flip chart; Individuals are instructed to visit each flip chart IN NO SPECIFIC SEQUENCE and add one comment to each flip chart. The exercise is debriefed by each individual flip chart being read back to the group.) Paired introductions are harder to manage (if the group size is 20 that would necessitate 10 break out rooms) Conversely other collaborative learning activities such as team exercises, Jigsaw learning, brainstorming ideas on a flip chart, can all be adapted to virtual workshops. We found that creating a simple chart such as the one alongside enabled us to design the best activity more effectively for virtual learning versus in-person learning.
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TYPEFACE Group Discussions There can be the assumption that it is not possible to hold group discussions virtually in a plenary format. In fact, nothing can be further from the truth, and this is the key differentiator that enables effective virtual workshops and where the biggest change in attitude and approach needs to occur. The skills used here are: •
Asking targeted Open questions
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Pausing
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Active Listening
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Asking follow-up questions
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Validating contribution
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Paraphrasing
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Summarizing
These skills are the same as in a live in-person session, they just can feel different in a virtual environment. For instance, the 2-4 second pause in an in-person session, can stretch to 7 seconds virtually. In addition, it can be harder to listen in the virtual session as the brain can be distracted with technical challenges when learning new technology. Effective virtual sessions also require as many people as possible to use their cameras and mikes because otherwise it could feel like trying to engage with a brick wall! In fact, in the sessions we ran, cameras were mandatory. 3. OVERALL LEARNING CURRICULUM When the learning outcome has been articulated, learning objectives developed and the overall content defined, the next course design element is to decide what content can be covered in a virtual workshop and which in an in-person session. When transitioning in-person content to virtual, it Is important to consider a few guidelines to make virtual learning as effective as possible. •
It is not as simple as taking a one-day programme and breaking this time into four two-hour sessions!
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Normally the maximum duration for a virtual workshop is 2.0 - 2.5 hours. Research has shown that virtual workshops are more tiring and require more intense concentration.
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When sequencing virtual sessions, the most effective gap between each module appears to be between 1 and 2 weeks. Shorter than that and there is no time to internalize content. More than that and participants lose the overall flow.
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To help participants integrate the content, it is important to set follow up work and pre-work, plus each module requires “bridging time” to link one session to the next. (So, 2.0 hours of learning becomes closer to 1.5 hours of content)
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Even if the session is virtual, providing participants with a Handout/Participant Guide can help focus, attention and learning.
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If participants can be part of a “class” – the same group at every session – this makes it easier to create and maintain psychological safety.
Then when building in the live, in-person sessions, here are a few additional questions to consider: •
How will you help participants remember and review the virtual content?
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How will you link the virtual sessions to the in-person sessions to integrate ideas?
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What key content will you review from the virtual sessions and how can you make this relevant and fresh?
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What new content will you include and how will you synthesize this with existing materials?
SUMMARY So, in summary, the technology available today enables much more content to be introduced virtually and less time spent in live sessions while still achieving retention. Designing these virtual workshops to achieve learning goals however requires in-depth consideration of which content to include (Task), customizing engagement to the platform and application (Group Process) and then deciding how best to structure and space out the overall curriculum. While the process is more time-intensive than you might initially believe, this investment is more than recouped by achieving learning effectiveness.
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RELIGION & SPIRITUALITY CLERGY, THE ‘GOOD DEATH’ AND PSYCHOLOGICAL TYPE DAVID KNIGHT (INTJ)
David Knight Is an Anglican priest born in Salford in 1959. After 20 years in parishes, evenly split between inner-city Salford and rural Warwickshire, he moved into healthcare chaplaincy. He has served as spiritual care lead in four hospices over the last 15 years. Since 2019 he has been Spiritual Care Lead for the Sussex Community NHS Trust and employed to design a strategy for spiritual healthcare in the community. He is also a doctoral researcher at the University of Warwick. His doctoral thesis, ‘Clergy, the ‘Good Death’ and Psychological Type’ has just been submitted to the University. Email: davidalanknight@ outlook.com
Psychological type theory has proved its worth in many different fields. It is a valued part of the tool kit in organisational development and team building, in counselling, coaching and mediation, in personal development and so on. However, it has never been applied to the process of dying and the choices people make on that journey. In this article I am aiming to describe the background and headline results of some research into whether psychological type theory can be connected to the ways in which people describe what a ‘good death’ looks like to them. The research lying behind this article has just been submitted as a dissertation to the University of Warwick. For the last 15 years I have been working as a Spiritual Care Lead within hospices. The first thing you have to accept in hospice work is that the human mortality rate continues to run at 100%. Most people are surprised by that – and that in itself is surprising given how long a time as a species we’ve had to adjust to the fact. It is the case that much of the work of a hospice is in helping people to adjust to the reality of dying. Despite the advance warning given by the fact that every human being who ever lived, has died, the prospect of our own death is profoundly offensive to most of us for most of the time. Given the general offensiveness of dying then, the title of this article, ‘Clergy, the ‘Good Death’ and Psychological Type’, contains a strangeness especially in the phrase the ‘good death’. Can our death ever be considered good? On the face of it the prospect of our own extinction is alarming. We have foretastes of what we think about dying every time we are scared, looking over a cliff edge, walking down a dark, city street weighing up the group standing idly a few hundred yards away, or hearing unwelcome words from a doctor. There are many experiences, a selection of which any of us can access, which teach us that we would prefer not to die, with fear being our ally in that heart-felt endeavour. However, these immediate responses to the possibility of dying are not the only ones. Jonathan Swift (1667 – 1745), a Church of Ireland
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clergyman, wrote a series of fictional journeys undertaken by a hero called Gulliver. The various fictional nations that Gulliver visited were intended to illustrate elements of the human condition and the shortcomings of the society in which Swift lived. In one nation he visits, Luggnagg, which Swift locates near Japan, Gulliver discovers that a proportion of the population, called the Struldbrugg, age but never die. He is very much taken by the idea of physical immortality and gets quite animated about the subject in discussion with his host. His host then explains the realities faced by these Immortals. They see several partners, their descendants and all the familiar faces of their world disappear one by one. Eventually, traumatised by loss, they withdraw from human society. The mind is marvellous but finite. After some time, the Immortals lose mental focus and become increasingly confused. Far from being envied, Gulliver’s host explains, they are widely pitied and are kept in secure accommodation at a perpetual cost to the taxpayer. Jonathan Swift, as an Anglican clergyman of his time, was not critiquing the after-life teaching of the Christian faith. However, he was pointing out that our life as we experience it now requires an ending for the sake of our health and happiness. Dying viewed in this way can be seen as ‘good’, because it gives zest and purpose to life. The moments of our lives matter because life will not continue forever.
Having worked in hospices for many years, it also seems to me that the manner of individual dying can contain ingredients that can make it feel either good or not for the dying person and those surrounding her. Over the years, I have observed that the ingredients that make a death a good one or not are, like all human behaviour, subject to patterning: people seem to differ from each other in this respect in consistent ways. As someone with an interest in psychological type theory, I am intrigued by the possibility that the dichotomies of psychological type could provide, potentially, a way to illuminate the patterns underlying the various understandings of good death.
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TYPEFACE In 2013 I decided to explore that thought and, since then, under the supervision of Professor Leslie Francis at the University of Warwick, I have been doing just that. Church of England clergy were selected as the research population and a questionnaire was designed to help explore their end of life care choices in relation to psychological type theory. Professor Francis kindly allowed me to make use of his Francis Psychological Type Scales (FPTS) so that I would be able to identify the psychological type of the research participants. The FPTS is a 40-item, forced choice, dichotomous set of scales. Ten each of the items attend to each of the four dichotomous constructs of psychological type theory. This set of scales has been widely used in a variety of research contexts and is empirically well established. The other element of the equation I needed was a way of finding out whether the choices that people made about their end of life care could be seen to link in some way to their psychological type. To help with this I set about designing a new set of scales. This is now called the Knight End of Life Scales, or KELS. It was hoped that this new set of scales, in partnership with the FPTS, would create some helpful conclusions about whether peoples’ choices about end of life care made patterns that could be interpreted using psychological type theory. The first step was to create a baseline list of possible end of life care choices gained from my experience of working with the dying. These possible choices were then framed in such a way as to capture known elements of the dichotomies of psychological type theory. For example, with the E-I dichotomy in mind, and taking the common experience of attending a day hospice, one question asked is ‘If attending a day hospice would you mostly prefer: the social interaction, or the peace and quiet of the garden?’ Another example, this time with the S-N dichotomy in mind, ‘I would prefer to be given information about my illness in: as much detail as possible, or in general principles’. Yet another example, with the T-F dichotomy in mind, ‘I would most appreciate the support of someone: who respected my reasoning, or who respected my values’. Finally, with the J-P dichotomy in mind, an example is, ‘When faced with choices about my care I would prefer to: make an early decision, or wait for more choices to emerge’. Several dozen questions and statements, framed with Type dichotomies in mind, were created to provide a reasonable spread across known elements of the typical behaviour of different Types.
With this baseline list in hand, I approached the Midlands Chapter of BAPT for assistance in editing and refining the list. Approaching an expert group in this way is a methodology sometimes known as ‘convening a Delphi Group’, named after the Delphic Oracle of Classical Greece. The original oracle, the Pythoness, was typically vague in the advice she gave. This was not the case here and I am grateful for the clarity and expertise which guided me in making quite a few revisions to the list. I am also grateful to a group of Type-literate clergy recruited from the Church of England Diocese of Worcester which produced a significant number of further revisions of my initial ideas. Several years, ten diocesan residential clergy conferences and 500 completed questionnaires later, it became possible to look for patterns and develop some explanations for how those patterns might connect to psychological type theory. The detailed arguments about these things exist mainly in table form and are expressed in statistical terms. What I’d like to do here is to present the main findings of the research in headline terms and without using maths. Here then are the three principal findings. First, and perhaps the most crucial element in the research, the Francis Psychological Type Scales performed very well in a context in which they had never been tested before: an exploration of dying. It had initially been feared that the unique existential challenge and high emotion of considering the facts of dying might cause a break-down in the normal behaviour of the research participants, which might in turn have an impact on capturing psychological type. Once the FPTS were seen to be taking this new context in their stride, a reliable research partner was available to act as a support to the new set of scales. Second, the new set of scales, the KELS, produced results which demonstrated patterns that seemed to be explicable in terms of psychological type theory. It is important to note that this new set of scales is not capable of allocating according to psychological type. Its sole aim is to identify patterns around which a narrative can be woven that incorporates psychological type theory. The items designed to describe hypothesised behaviours associated with the E-I, T-F and J-P dichotomies patterned in ways that were explicable in psychological type terms. The Judging and Perceiving scales performed well in terms of internal consistency reliability, but consistently tended towards a preference for the scale items associated with Perceiving, in contrast with the FPTS which demonstrated a Judging preference among the participants. Because internal consistency reliability was established, it was argued that this consistent change of preference, compared to the FPTS reported preference, was a psychological type mediated response to the subject matter of dying and death. Death takes place, for example, most usually in a context of partial information reaching the patient in systems, and within a timescale, outside of the patient’s control. Adapting to this reality is necessary in maintaining emo-
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TYPEFACE pothesised Extraversion behaviours. It was argued that this represented a need driven by context to explore with others their disease and their care options. Participants with an Intuition preference were accessing hypothesised Perceiving behaviours in addition to hypothesised Intuition behaviours. It was argued that this combination may represent a tendency to scan the external world with the intention of reshaping it. It was argued that this combination of preferences might result in a tendency to be drawn to innovative treatments and methods of symptom management. Participants with a Sensing preference were accessing hypothesised Judging behaviours in addition to hypothesised Sensing behaviours. It was argued that this combination may represent an inclination to re-create (against a new backdrop of personal mortality) a concrete understanding of the world and one’s place in it. It was argued that this combination of preferences might result in prompt decision making in favour of established, evidence-based treatments. tional health while dying. This and other ‘facts of dying’ seem to provide an easier fit with a Perceiving preference. The argument then is that people with a Judging preference assume Perceiving behaviours as part of a necessary adaptation to the facts of dying. This explanation around the items aiming to explore the J-P dichotomy allowed them to join the other wellbehaved items in the KELS instrument. The exception to this generally obedient picture is provided by the items intended to explore hypothesised S-N behaviours. It was hard to see the patterning in the results for these items and all attempts to explain this situation were inconclusive. Difficulty in engaging with the S-N dichotomy in describing end of life care behaviours had been consistent throughout the research. The Delphi Group and Interview Group had both made more corrections to items designed around the S-N dichotomy than was the case with any of the other parts of the new scales. The Pilot Project in the Dioceses of Worcester and St Alban’s produced similar results to those of the main research, which incorporated an additional eight dioceses. Further research is needed to explore how the items intended to illustrate the S-N dichotomy might be improved. The third and final headline result concerns the exploration of the correlations between psychological type (established by the FPTS) and patterning in the end of life behaviours (described in the KELS). It was demonstrated that the data reflected that, in the context of end of life care decisions, research participants with particular psychological type preferences were accessing the behaviours described in the KELS in multiple, statistically significant ways. These last few paragraphs describe the picture created around each element of the dichotomies of psychological type theory. For reasons of clarity this bit is laid out a little repetitively. Participants with an Introversion preference were accessing hypothesised Judging behaviours in addition to hypothesised Introversion behaviours. It was argued that this represented a need driven by context to act more decisively in the outer world. Participants with an Extraversion preference were accessing hypothesised Perceiving behaviours in addition to hy-
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Participants with a Feeling preference were accessing hypothesised Perceiving behaviours in addition to hypothesised Feeling behaviours. It was argued that this represented a desire continually to test out the reactions of others and thereby explore consensus in decision making. Participants with a Thinking preference were accessing hypothesised Judging behaviours in addition to hypothesised Thinking behaviours. It was argued that this represented a desire to make the most rational care decisions in everyone’s best interests. Participants with a Judging preference were accessing hypothesised Sensing and Thinking behaviours in addition to hypothesised Judging behaviours. It was argued that this represented an impulse among those who most value order in the outer world to impose an appearance of that order. Participants with a Perceiving preference were accessing hypothesised Intuition and Feeling behaviours in addition to hypothesised Perceiving behaviours. It was argued that this represented an impulse, among those who value allowing the external world to reveal itself over time, to explore the meaning and purpose of a time of serious illness, as well as the evolution in their relationships with others. Although it is the case that in the end we know little about what people value at the end of life, nonetheless it is clear from the research that Church of England clergy conceptualise the good death in ways that map onto psychological type theory. This observation does not undermine individuality in dying, just as psychological type theory does not undermine it in any other part of individual living. The KELS instrument appears to map individual differences in the way that the good death is conceptualised. This mapping of individual differences appears to be open to explanation using psychological type theory. The research opens up the tantalising possibility that the most stressful element of the human condition, dying, and attempts to achieve a good death, may be helpfully illustrated and supported by psychological type theory.
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THEORY AND RESEARCH THE CONCEPT OF ATTITUDE RICHARD OWEN (INTJ) Director of Finance
Current BAPT Director of Finance, Richard Owen, M.Sc. (INTJ) is an independent practitioner, delivering workshops and coaching in London, Brighton and online. He uses a depth typology approach to personal development; helping clients address challenges in relationships and life transitions through his Personality PartsTM model. Richard holds an M.Sc in Organisational Psychology, an Accredited Diploma in Transformational Coaching and is certified with MBTI® and a range of other Type and Trait assessments. Email: richard@personalityparts. com.
In January 2019 I embarked on my second full reading of Jung’s Psychological Types. This time I chose to digest it day by day in tiny chunks, over 16 months, spending between 15 and 30 minutes reading and tweeting quotes on my twitter account @RichardOwen77. This approach seemed sensible due to the density of Jung’s writing style and the need to really ponder and decipher what he actually meant. Perhaps it is the often old fashioned language, or the fact that it was translated from German into English (with smatterings of Jung’s Greek, Latin and French phrases for good measure): but this is not an easy book to read and comprehend. Nevertheless it is the key resource for any serious study of psychological type; therefore I see the considerable mental effort as worthwhile. I personally like my hardback copy of Psychological Types, which is the original English translation by H.G. Baynes (C.G. Jung, 1923). Helton Godwin Baynes was a collaborator of Jung’s and accompanied him on his travels in East Africa. He was British and studied analysis in Zurich then returned to work in London where he helped form an Analytical Psychology Club in the 1920s. I heard from a knowledgeable person many years ago that this translation is arguably better than the revised version by R.F.C Hull that became part of Jung’s Collected Works. However I also use the digital version of the Collected Works (C. G. Jung, 2014) and will take my quotes in this article from that version (CW6 is Psychological Types), as it uses the standard paragraph numbers: making it easier to find the references. Also not many people have the Baynes translation, it is often difficult and expensive to obtain. In this article I wish to focus on the term ‘attitude’, which shows up in a text search as appearing 710 times in the book Psychological Types, that’s more than once per page on average. It is clearly an important term in Jung’s theory, but is it one that we fully understand today? Let’s see how Jung describes the Introverted and Extraverted perspectives near the beginning of Psychological Types:
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“In general one could say that the introverted standpoint is one which sets the ego and the subjective psychological process above the object and the objective process, or at any rate seeks to hold its ground against the object. This attitude, therefore, gives the subject a higher value than the object, and the object accordingly has a lower value … The extraverted standpoint, on the contrary, subordinates the subject to the object, so that the object has the higher value … The one sees everything in terms of his own situation, the other in terms of the objective event. These contrary attitudes are in themselves no more than correlative mechanisms: a diastolic going out and seizing of the object, and a systolic concentration and detachment of energy from the object seized. Every human being possesses both mechanisms as an expression of his natural liferhythm … One mechanism will naturally predominate, and if this condition becomes in any way chronic a type will be produced; that is, an habitual attitude in which one mechanism predominates permanently, although the other can never be completely suppressed since it is an integral part of the psychic economy. Hence there can never be a pure type in the sense that it possesses only one mechanism with the complete atrophy of the other. A typical attitude always means merely the relative predominance of one mechanism.” (C.G. Jung, CW6 para. 5-6.) Jung’s conception of Introversion and Extraversion is central to Psychological Types. He spends a vast amount of time discussing it and giving supporting examples from a wide range of sources. It draws on subject-object dualism, a philosophical idea that comes from at least as far back as Descartes, if not further. Remember Jung was steeped in philosophy, especially philosophers from the Germanic Western tradition such
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TYPEFACE as Goethe, Nietzsche and Schopenhauer. He was working with a psychodynamic systems model of the mind or, more broadly, ‘the psyche’ which encompasses both the conscious and unconscious aspects. The idea is: for a psychological interaction to take place there must be a subject, i.e. a distinct component of the system (such as the ego) that does the ‘subject’-ive experiencing, and an object, i.e. something that is being experienced and engaged with, whether that be an actual physical object in the world, another part of the psyche or a conceptual mental object. In this interaction between subject and object, one’s attention, interest and value can turn towards the subject and its inner processes (i.e. Introversion), or towards the object (i.e. Extraversion). See Fig.1 for a diagram of this, similar to one created by Marie Louise Von-Franz (Von Franz & Hillman, 1971). An arrow going from subject to object is the mechanism of Extraversion, an arrow going to subject from object is the mechanism of Introversion. The solid arrow denotes the dominant mechanism, i.e. the attitude, and the dashed arrow the secondary mechanism.
scription of the Introverted Sensation Type, using terms such as: “extreme cases … serious cases … pathological cases … normal type” (C.G. Jung, CW6, para.650-651). So it is clear that there is a spectrum of degree of the attitude depending on its frequency. We might see attitude as somewhat like the term ‘preference’ which we use today, and although the MBTI® does not measure preference quantitatively, and discourages us from talking about it in that way, it is clear that clients instinctively have an idea of whether a particular pair of opposites presents a ‘large’ preference, i.e. habitual attitude or problematically high level of polarisation for them, or not. That certainly forms a part of many real feedback conversations. The art of being a Type practitioner lies in coaching people through the introspective process of recognising what are often fairly subtle preferences at this point in their life. Of course MBTI ® has stretched the definition of Type from Jung’s chronic presentation to a broader category that encompasses pretty much everyone. Now, to explore the term attitude further, let’s turn to the Chapter 11 (XI) Definitions section of Psychological Types. Jung explains in the introduction to that chapter that there is plenty of scope for the misunderstanding of terms in psychology, so he provides the definitions to make it as clear as possible precisely how he defines and uses the concepts himself. He says, “I would like the reader to refer to these explanations in case of doubt” (C.G. Jung, CW6 para. 675). So by Jung’s own insistence, this is his final word on the definition. It is a long section so I have edited to remove some of the more rambling parts and keep some key ideas for this discussion, but I do recommend getting hold of a copy and reading it in full some time.
It is important to understand that, whilst Jung uses the word ‘attitude’ a lot in his writing on Introversion and Extraversion, its meaning has been mistaken in the later Myers-Briggs® theory, which uses the term as if Introversion and Extraversion ARE attitudes. Whereas actually, as we see above, I/E are mechanisms of turning inward or outward in terms of a subject – object relationship. Attitude is more about a broader phenomenon of the one sided dynamic that prioritises one mechanism or process over others. Jungian Scholar Steve Myers (Myers, 2018, p. xix) writes, “Attitude is a central concept in Psychological Types. It describes the tendency to see certain things or react in certain ways, and not see alternatives … the association with extraversion and introversion is a red herring”. Note some other key points from the CW6 passages above: firstly attitude is a relative predominance of one mechanism over another, so I think of it as a momentary state where one takes priority and suppresses the other. But then we have different degrees of attitude depending on how frequently this situation arises over time. Secondly, when the attitude is chronic or permanent, in force most of the time, that’s when a Type arises. But Jung makes clear that there are no pure types, the attitude is never in force 100% of the time, but in a Type one mechanism is relatively more dominant compared to the other. Importantly Jung does describe different degrees of Type in his work, such as the de-
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TYPEFACE Attitude in the sense of ordinary attention can be a relatively unimportant subsidiary phenomenon, but it can also be a general principle governing the whole psyche. Depending on environmental influences and on the individual’s education, general experience of life, and personal convictions, a subjective constellation of contents may be habitually present, continually moulding a certain attitude that may affect the minutest details of his life. Every man who is particularly aware of the seamy side of existence, for instance, will naturally have an attitude that is constantly on the look-out for something unpleasant. This conscious imbalance is compensated by an unconscious expectation of pleasure. Again, an oppressed person has a conscious attitude that always anticipates oppression; he selects this factor from the general run of experience and scents it out everywhere. His unconscious attitude, therefore, aims at power and superiority …
“[Definition of Attitude] … For us, attitude is a readiness of the psyche to act or react in a certain way … To have an attitude means to be ready for something definite, even though this something is unconscious; for having an attitude is synonymous with an a priori orientation to a definite thing, no matter whether this be represented in consciousness or not. The state of readiness, which I conceive attitude to be, consists in the presence of a certain subjective constellation, a definite combination of psychic factors or contents, which will either determine action in this or that definite direction, or react to an external stimulus in a definite way … a selection or judgment takes place which excludes anything irrelevant. As to what is or is not relevant, this is decided by the already constellated combination of contents. Whether the point of reference is conscious or unconscious does not affect the selectivity of the attitude, since the selection is implicit in the attitude and takes place automatically. It is useful, however, to distinguish between the two, because the presence of two attitudes is extremely frequent, one conscious and the other unconscious. This means that consciousness has a constellation of contents different from that of the unconscious, a duality particularly evident in neurosis …. The concept of attitude has some affinity with Wundt’s concept of apperception, with the difference that apperception includes the process of relating the already constellated contents to the new content to be apperceived, whereas attitude relates exclusively to the subjectively constellated content. Apperception is, as it were, the bridge which connects the already existing, constellated contents with the new one, whereas attitude would be the support or abutment of the bridge on the one bank, and the new content the abutment on the other bank. Attitude signifies expectation, and expectation always operates selectively and with a sense of direction … This automatic phenomenon is an essential cause of the onesidedness of conscious orientation (q.v.). It would lead to a complete loss of equilibrium if there were no selfregulating, compensatory (v. Compensation) function in the psyche to correct the conscious attitude. In this sense, therefore, the duality of attitude is a normal phenomenon, and it plays a disturbing role only when the onesidedness is excessive …
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The whole psychology of an individual even in its most fundamental features is oriented in accordance with his habitual attitude … The habitual attitude is always a resultant of all the factors that exert a decisive influence on the psyche, such as innate disposition, environmental influences, experience of life, insights and convictions gained through differentiation (q.v.), collective (q.v.) views, etc. … How enormous the individual differences are can be seen most clearly, perhaps, in the question of likes and dislikes. Here practically all rules go by the board. What is there, in the last resort, that has not at some time given man pleasure, and what is there that has not caused him pain? Every instinct, every function can be subordinated to another … Thinking may overrun everything else, or feeling swallow up thinking and sensation, all depending on the attitude … 2323 23
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TYPEFACE As evidence that Jung did not restrict the concept of attitude to Introversion and Extraversion, he clearly describes how attitude relates to the differentiation of functions, leading to thinking, feeling, sensation, and intuitive attitudes. Near the end Jung mentions other attitudes that are not even related to Type: instead social attitudes relating to ‘isms’. Steve Myers also picks up on this, “Jung suggests that one way to identify social attitudes in contemporary life is to look at words ending in ‘ism’. He gives the examples of ‘materialism, atheism, communism, socialism, liberalism, intellectualism, [and] existentialism’ (C.G. Jung, CW9i, p.62) However he also suggests many other examples that don’t rhyme with ‘ism’ (C.G. Jung CW16, p.6) Isms are usually one-sided because they promote one principle and neglect the opposite.” (Myers, 2018, p. 20) In my discussions with Steve Myers around Sept 2019 when we did our ‘BAPT In Conversation’ Webinar (BAPT, 2020) he was starting to focus his research away from Type, onto one-sided attitudes more broadly. This involves societal and political issues, for example, and how they might be reconciled and transcended. When we take this more inclusive view of attitude it helps us to embrace Jung’s ideas on psychology more widely, instead of focusing just on the particular albeit important area of Type.
At bottom, attitude is an individual phenomenon that eludes scientific investigation. In actual experience, however, certain typical attitudes can be distinguished in so far as certain psychic functions can be distinguished. When a function habitually predominates, a typical attitude is produced. According to the nature of the differentiated function, there will be constellations of contents that create a corresponding attitude. There is thus a typical thinking, feeling, sensation, and intuitive attitude. Besides these purely psychological attitudes, whose number might very well be increased, there are also social attitudes, namely, those on which a collective idea has set its stamp. They are characterized by the various “-isms.” These collective attitudes are very important, in some cases even outweighing the importance of the individual attitude.”
As Jung said himself, "[on the 4 functions of type] these four criteria are just so many viewpoints among others, such as willpower, temperament, imagination, memory, morality, religiousness, etc. There is nothing dogmatic about them, nor do they claim to be the ultimate truth about psychology; but their basic nature recommends them as suitable principles of classification. Classification has little value if it does not provide a means of orientation and a practical terminology. I find classification into types particularly helpful when I am called upon to explain parents to children or husbands to wives, and vice versa. It is also useful in understanding one’s own prejudices." (C.G. Jung, CW18, para.504).
(C.G. Jung, CW6 para. 687-691.) So what can we learn from this? Attitude is a rationally deduced (a priori) concept to explain how one-sided orientation of the mind arises. It selects and constellates certain contents over others and provides a readiness for similar contents to be attended to and related to it. This starts to sound like a selfperpetuating process: like attracts like. It acts automatically, therefore it is not a deliberate choice or intentional process. It is a normal phenomenon, so most of us experience it to some degree although it can be extreme and disturbing. The spectrum of attitude can range from relatively unimportant to something that fundamentally governs the whole person, often with compensatory conscious and unconscious attitudes. Attention is a mechanism by which attitude works, which is a key theoretical point that I have taken into explanatory models that may help to bridge the understanding of type with modern academic psychology. Interestingly Jung describes many factors that influence attitude: including the innate disposition that we often associate with type (although I’d dispute the innate, i.e. inborn idea as such, preferring intrinsic), but also environment, experience, education, development, etc.
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References: BAPT. (2020). Youtube 'In Conversation With' Playlist. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/playlist? list=PLm6GEpIyTRH7RR1z3u92YV1pQxpV3a6xX Jung, C. G. (1923). Psychological Types: Or, The Psychology of Individuation. Translated by H. Godwin Baynes. Reprinted 1953: Harcourt, Brace / Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Jung, C. G. (2014). The Collected Works of C. G. Jung: complete digital edition Vol. 1-20. G. Adler & R. F. C. Hull (Eds.), Myers, S. (2018). Myers-Briggs Typology vs. Jungian Individuation: Overcoming One-Sidedness in Self and Society: Routledge. Von Franz, M.-L., & Hillman, J. (1971). Lectures on Jung's typology (Vol. 4): Spring Publications. secondary mechanism.
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“This is from a series of images crafted by Christine Rigden, one of the more fun aspects of her role as BAPT Webmaster and Social Media Manager.”
WORDS OF WISDOM FROM THE MASTER! “A man can hope for satisfaction and fulfilment only in what he does not yet possess; he cannot find pleasure in something of which he has already had too much.” (C.G. Jung)
[This quotation is reproduced, with their permission, from the September, 2008 Newsletter of Type Resources Inc.]
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SPOTLIGHT ON RESEARCH JOHN HACKSTON (INTP)
John is Head of Thought Leadership at The MyersBriggs Company; he is a Chartered Psychologist with over thirty years of experience in helping clients to use psychometric tests and questionnaires. He carries out research to bring personality assessments, in particular the MBTI®, to life, helping practitioners and end users apply the insights they gain both inside and outside work.
Email: JHackston@themyersbriggs. com
Last edition’s Spotlight on Research column looked at studies that were particularly relevant to Covid-19 and remote working, but this time we have a more general research round-up, with an around the world theme. We start in Korea, go across the Pacific to Brazil, then across the Atlantic to the UK, double back to the USA, and then back to Korea again, concluding with some (possibly) helpful information for any travel you have planned. Of course, the consequences of the Coronavirus are still with us, and our research is ongoing; if you do want to take part into our remote working and Covid survey, you still can. Just go to: https:// www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/MBTIC19. In the meantime, however, here is a recent selection of research from a pre-Covid world; enjoy! Using the MBTI® assessment improves selfacceptance, self-esteem, and acceptance of others … Critics of the type approach often claim that there is no evidence for the validity of the MBTI® assessment. This is demonstrably not true; there is a great deal of evidence, dating back many years. However, given the persistence of this untruth, it gladdens my old heart when I see new evidence of the effectiveness of MBTI®-based development programmes presented. One such study surfaced in a Korean medical journal earlier this year. Song Won Choi and Hee Sook Kim divided a sample of 36 professional soldiers into a control group and an experimental group, with 18 participants in each. The experimental group took part in an interpersonal relationship improvement programme based around the MBTI®, consisting of eight 90-minute sessions. Members of both groups completed questionnaire-based measures of self-acceptance, self-esteem, and the extent to which they accepted other people. Following the programme, the experimental group had significantly higher scores on selfacceptance, self-esteem and acceptance of others than did the control group. In other words, the MBTI®-based programme had a significant positive impact.
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Although this study had a relatively small sample, it does provide one more piece of evidence that MBTI®-based interventions can have positive realworld effects. … not to mention self-knowledge and positive team behaviours MBTI® feedback is often used to build selfawareness, resulting in a range of impacts, as previous research projects by my colleagues Helen Rayner and Nikhita Blackburn have shown. A recent Brazilian study shows similar results and demonstrates the effectiveness of the MBTI® for improving interpersonal skills. Gabriela Ferreira de Camargos Rosa and her colleagues invited 43 medical students to complete an online type questionnaire and then worked through a group feedback process with them in small teams. These groups were constructed on the basis of reported type so as to include representatives of each temperament. Following this, the students were invited to a complete a short questionnaire asking them about the extent to which using the MBTI® had improved their self-knowledge, teamwork, relationship with colleagues, leadership, communication, decision-making, professionalism, conflict management and professional health practice. Following type feedback, the student group said they had improved in all nine areas, with all except leadership skills showing a statistically significant difference. The biggest improvements were seen in self-knowledge and in professionalism. The study provides further evidence for the effectiveness of the type approach when combined with active learning and feedback. All present and correct? Presentations. Most of us have to deliver them, almost all of us attend them and, for many students, group presentations are an essential part of their learning. But how does our personality relate to our behaviour during a presentation and, in particular, the extent to which we look at the presenter or elsewhere, characterised as “out of focus” behaviour (for example looking at the ceiling or the floor, or reading notes, or looking at our phone or
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TYPEFACE watch)? Ahmed Fekry, Georgios A. Dafoulas and Manal Ismail carried out a study to investigate. The researchers recorded videos of a group of final year students at Middlesex University while they were presenting their projects in a group presentation. In all, 8 hours of presentations for 40 groups of students, covering 137 different presentations, were analysed. The students also completed MBTI® and Belbin assessments. The results showed that students with ISTJ and ISTP preferences spent the greatest proportion of time looking at the presenter, while those with INTP preferences spent the least amount of time doing this. By a large margin, students with INTJ preferences spent the greatest amount of time out of focus and not looking at the presenter, with INTP and ISFP some distance behind. Those with ISTP preferences spent the least amount of time out of focus. This does not of course mean that people with INTJ preferences were not paying attention, at least not necessarily. They could, for example, have been so inspired by the presentations that they were transported into a rich internal whirlwind of ideas and possibilities. Also, the researchers did not record how presenters reacted to not being overtly paid attention to by some of the group; did this put them off their stride, or motivate them to try harder, or did this depend on their own type preferences? At a time when many of us are delivering online presentations with limited audience feedback, this may have been particularly interesting to know. What teaching methods work for you? Presentations are of course only one of many methods used in teaching. Laurie Murphy, Nina B. Eduljee, Karen Croteau and Suzanne Parkman investigated the preferred teaching methods of 507 undergraduate college students with varying type preferences. Each student completed Form M of the MBTI® assessment, and their learning preferences were measured using a 27item questionnaire. This assessed their preference for nine different types of teaching methods: lectures, films, classroom discussions, experiential activities, games or demonstrations, student presentations, case studies, quizzes and research. The results showed that lectures were, on average, the preferred teaching method across all MBTI® preference pairs. However, those with E, N, F or P preferences identified lectures that also included student interaction as their most preferred method whereas those with I, S, T or J identified lectures accompanied by visuals such as PowerPoint as their most preferred method. Lectures with no visuals and no interaction (i.e. the lecturer just talking) were one of the least preferred methods for all types. Looking across the methods, E-I showed the greatest differences. Extraverts were more likely than Introverts to express a preference for classroom discussions, experiential activities, games or demonstrations, student presentations, and case studies. This research demonstrates that the lecture can still be an important part of teaching – provided it is interactive, with interesting visuals and some degree of student interaction. It also highlights the danger of relying too much on discussions, experiential activities and so on as these will be less preferred by students with an Introversion preference. One drawback of this
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study is that, despite the reasonably large sample size, only preference pair differences were discussed in the results rather than whole types. Type and tourism Going on holiday this year? Quite possibly not, given the circumstances. On a personal note, I’m writing this on what would have been the last day of a (cancelled) week’s holiday. However, if you do have some travel in mind, then research reported in Tourism Management Research might be of interest. Kwon Bo-min and Eun-park Park asked 142 young people in their 20s about their preferred tourism activities. They found that Extraversion-Introversion and Judging-Perceiving were important, with statistically significant differences between IJ, IP, EP, and EJ groupings in the way people act when they decide to travel and when they travel. Annoyingly, I can’t find the information to pin down exactly what those differences were; but if I do, I’ll be sure to let you know. Many people are now letting computers help with the tricky business of deciding on a holiday. To improve this process, ChiSeo Jeong, Jong-Yong Lee and Kye-Dong Jung have proposed an AI deep learning system to recommend tourism activities that will suit an individual’s MBTI® personality type. Whether or not this is successful will I guess need to wait until after the effects of lockdown have come and gone, and it is not clear how the system would cope with couples or families with different type preferences. And it’s also true that people with some type preferences might actively resist using such a system. References Bo-min, K. & Park, E. (2019). Differences in tourist behavior according to MBTI® personality type: A focus on people in their 20s. Tourism Management Research 23(2), 481-495. Choi, S.W. & Kim, H.S. (2020). Effects of an interpersonal relationship improvement program using MBTI on self-acceptance, self-esteem, and acceptance of others of professional soldiers. Journal of the Korean Academy of Psychiatric and Mental Health Nursing 29(1), 64-72. Ferreira de Camargos Rosa, F., Rosa, M.H., Barros, M.C.V., Hattori, W. T., Paulino, D. B., & Raimondi, G.A. (2019). The MBTI in medical education: A powerful strategy to develop teamwork. Brazilian Journal of Medical Education 43(4).
Fekry, A., Dafoulas, G.A., & and Ismail, M. (2019). The relation between student behaviours in group presentations and their teamwork modalities using Belbin and MBTI analysis. Procedia Computer Science 164, 292–300. Jeong, C., Lee, J. & Jung, K. (2020). Adaptive recommendation system for tourism by personality type using deep learning. International Journal of Internet, Broadcasting and Communication 12(1) 55-60. Murphy, L., Eduljee, N.B., Croteau, K., & Parkman, S. (2020). Relationship between personality type and preferred teaching methods for undergraduate college students. International Journal of Research in Education and Science 6(1), 100-109.
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TYPEWATCHING AT THE CINEMA PANDEMIC, TYPE AND FEELGOOD MOVES LOCKDOWN—TIME FOR THE COUCH AND THE SCREEN! PETER MALONE (INFJ) Peter Malone (INFJ) is an Australian, Melbournebased. He was president of SIGNIS, The World Catholic Association for Communications, and is a member of the SIGNIS Cinema Desk. His books on Type are ‘Let a Viking do it: Hagar and family illustrate the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator’; ‘MyersBriggs goes to the movies’; ‘Mirror, Mirror on the Screen’ and ‘The same as Christ Jesus: Gospel and Type’. He has served in a variety of capacities in international media organisations. He is a Life Member of the Australian Association for Psychological Type (AusAPT). Email: petermalonemsc@yahoo. co.uk.
This is a Type and Movies column written in the time of pandemic, the invasion of coronavirus, Covid-19, into human bodies and into the fabric of society and our daily living. Never has the word “unprecedented” experienced such overuse – and the phrase “uncharted waters”. However, television networks, streaming companies, You-Tube, VOD - video on demand… have actually been doing a lot of charting. And the question arises: what have we been watching over the last months? And why? At first, there may have been some curiosity as to watching movies with contagion or plague in the title. But as we have been experiencing our apocalyptic times and wondering what post-apocalyptic will actually look like in science-reality rather than in science-fiction, we may have opted for the “feelgood” movies, series, documentaries.
may come as a bit of a shock to find that Swimming with Men is not just competitive breaststroke, backstroke. It is actually synchronised swimming (shades of Esther Williams)! Men’s audiences might be taken aback but most of us will enjoy the blokes participating, some resisting, some forced, but all getting into the swim, so to speak, and not only coming to enjoy it, surviving any ribbing, and going off to Scandinavia to compete and, in the best of British, to win. Some feelgood Thinking. (For across the Channel comparisons, the French film industry produced their particular version, Le Grand Bain – translated rather ungraciously into English, Sink or Swim!)
The British film industry may have been anticipating all of this when we realise that within the last 12 months there have been two feelgood movies for men, Swimming with Men, Fishermen’s Friends, and two for women, Military Wives, Love Sarah. Not that all of us can’t watch and enjoy them all. It may be that the word “feelgood” automatically suggests our Feeling Function. But, as we have always been (and constantly) reminded, Type does not measure or indicate feelings or emotions. We have had to explore what and how feelings functioned with Feeling. And, perhaps more difficultly, how feelings have functioned with Thinking. We can start with the two titles with “men” in them. Actually, they are fairly blokey shows, men not exactly having a shack experience, but having some exclusive time together. It
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TYPEFACE And this was even more the case, perhaps, with ten Cornwall blokes singing sea shanties, “Weigh Heigh, and up she rises” in Fisherman’s Friends. Many the descendants of Cornish smugglers, they enjoy the rousing songs of the pirate days and convicts, “bound for South Australia”! Once again, there is enthusiasm, reluctance, some personal tragedies to make us tearful along the way, wives in the background. But, this is a story of mateship, men enjoying one another’s company, enjoying the singing, not against a bit of fame here and there, recording and then going on concert tours for charities’ sake. Some feelgood Thinking.
mellow by the end and be as Feeling Function as everyone else, but it is entertaining to watch how the two women exercise their leadership of the choir. They are not exactly competitive, the choir, but they do get to sing at an important military function in the Royal Albert Hall. Some feelgood Feeling. Love Sarah, at least in Australia, is scheduled for July 2020 cinema release. We are living in hope. Actually, this is a very nice film, a bit of sadness at the beginning when Sarah dies. Her close friend, Isabella, had signed with Sarah to renovate a Notting Hill storefront and establish bakery. Sarah’s daughter, Clarissa, a ballet student who experiences breakup, returns to live with her grandmother, Mimi (who had been in a strained relationship with her daughter) and, together, they set to work. Their bakery, cakes tea and coffee, is called Love Sarah, in memoriam.
It was not the intention of this article to give a priority to men or to women and feeling good. It just started that way. And the next two films certainly make up for any lost ground. The box office for Military Wives was very disappointing, not because of the film itself, but it opened in cinemas in the UK (and in Australia) in the first weeks of March – and screenings were almost immediately terminated, cinemas closed. Will it get any more cinema release or go straight to streaming? This is a choir film as well. But, this time, it is the women, the wives who live in communities where the husbands have gone off to war – and some sadness with deaths in action, men coming home injured. By and large, the women recruits clearly identify with the Feeling Function – most appropriate. A couple of the enterprising wives make suggestions for support groups, reading, cooking … But, the one that takes off is to form a choir. Actually, the screenplay offers a conflict between the Feeling perspective and Thinking perspective. Sharon Horgan is considerate of the lives and feelings of the wives. On the other hand, the wife of an officer, Kristin Scott Thomas (who generally presents a Thinking function face to the world) relies on rules and regulations, theoretical books and notes about music and singing. We know that she is going to
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It is not a success immediately, though there is a huge range of beautiful and colourful cakes all primed and posing for their close-ups. Multicultural London provides the solution, all kinds of ethnic cakes and delights, mass orders – and, instead of a competition, a feature special, layout and photogenic cakes, for Time Out. Some feelgood Feeling. So, for Covid-19 confinement, feelgood movies of the close thinking and feeling kind. As Judy Garland sang, “Shaking the blues away…”.
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BY NANCY SILCOX (ENTJ) Assistant Editor
E -Skype
S - Post Cards
T - Rules
J - Hoarding
I – Rejuvenating
N - Zoom
F - Carers
P - New
I don’t know how you handled the COVID-19 Pandemic and Lockdown where you are. I have friends who absolutely hated the restriction and isolation but I also have friends who relished being allowed to enjoy solitary time without feeling guilty! For some it was a time to enjoy coffee on the patio and walks in the woods among the bluebells; for some it was a steep learning curve of working from home with Zoom conferencing and home-schooling their children; for some it was a time of extreme anxiety as they wondered how they were to pay their bills with no pay check coming in; and sadly, for some it was a time of fear and mourning as either they or their loved ones became ill or died of coronavirus. Throughout, many were reaching out via technology whether telephone or social media, while many rose to the challenge by learning new skills such as cooking or tried their hands at writing and then, many found relief in humour like someone writing “Can we uninstall 2020 and install it again? This version has a virus!” E - May I suggest that perhaps Extraverts found the isolation trying and turned to technology to keep in touch with friends, relatives and colleagues? They would have made the most of the telephone, Skype and Facebook. With their focus on the outer world, sitting within four walls day after day would have been like prison. A funny going around was “I’m so excited—it’s time to take out the rubbish—what should I wear?” Extraverts would have taken full advantage of their gardens and being allowed to go out of doors for exercise once a day. What freedom when the once a day was lifted! And the shops opening would have been paradise! I - Introverts on the other hand might have been delighted to sit and read books by the hours without feeling guilty that they should be doing this or that. Someone sent me a post that said “There is no longer am and pm. There is just ‘coffee time’ and ‘wine time’.” Another says “8pm is now the official time to remove your day pyjamas and to put your night pyjamas on!” I have a friend who wrote that she’s lived in her house for 10 years and never actually gotten to enjoy it because of working long hours and having no leisure time but during lockdown, besides staying safe at home, she was resting, resetting, reassessing, rejuvenating and reconnecting at home. S - The Sensing preference is often very practical and might have taken the opportunity to learn cooking, do projects that had been put off for years ‘until they had time’. Often not fans of technology, they may have written and POSTED cards or letters! The Sensing Type often takes things literally so perhaps they identified with this Sensing joke that went around: “They said a mask and gloves were all you needed to go to the grocery store—but they lied—everybody else had clothes on!” N - Those who prefer iNtuition are often future focused, so they might have said, “During lockdown, school is cancelled, going to the café is cancelled, church is cancelled, meeting up with friends is cancelled, but reading a book is not cancelled, Skyping with friends and family is not cancelled, laughing is not cancelled and hope is not cancelled!” INtuitives are often expert at thinking out of the box and blue-sky thinking, so they may have found new ways of working or doing the things they wanted to do. So you can’t meet up with friends but you can ‘Zoom’ together, and attend meetings like the BAPT Conference in April! T - Rules are important to the Thinking preference and they would probably have carefully kept two metres away from anyone else and used the hand sanitizer religiously. They would say “Better to be six feet apart than six feet under.” Perhaps it was a Thinker who came up with “How long is this social distancing supposed to last? The Mrs. keeps trying to get back in the house!” Logic is also a key in their lives and the Thinking ‘wordsmiths’ who like puns and plays on words, if asked what they would do if they won £80 million, their answer might be “practise social-distancing!”
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TYPEFACE F - I speculate that lockdown was particularly difficult for the Feeling Types who would miss interacting with friends and family. They might join a ‘virtual choir like ‘The Blessing’. These would be the most likely to be delivering food to those who were sheltering and self-isolating, checking on their neighbours, and enthusiastically clapping for the NHS and Key Workers every Thursday at 8pm. In fact, their Feeling Preference might even mean that they are in the NHS and caring for those with the coronavirus! Their tongue-in-cheek joke might be, “Twenty years ago we had Johnny Cash, Bob Hope and Steve Jobs. Now we have no Cash, no Hope and no Jobs. PLEASE—DO NOT let Kevin Bacon die!” J - Remember the run on toilet paper at the beginning? Those hoarding and panic buying might well have been the Judging Type who likes to be prepared and plan ahead. Their joke might be the Classified Ad: “Single man with toilet paper seeks woman with hand sanitizer for good clean fun!” P - I can imagine the Perceiving Type musing, “Still haven’t decided where to go for Easter—the Living room or the Bedroom!” Although they were most probably not panic buying and stockpiling, they would be great at coming up with new recipes to use what they did have to make interesting and varied meals.
And a final word to keep you smiling: “It is with great sadness that I have to mention the loss of a few local businesses—the Chinese has been taken away; the shoe shop has had to put their foot down and given staff the boot; the tarmac company has reached the end of the road and the bread company has run out of dough.” Guess what Type I am?! © This article, together with others in the ‘Types of … ‘ series, which have been published in TypeFace between Autumn, 2002, to the current issue are the copyright of Nancy Silcox. Assistant Editor. Permission granted for publication in TypeFace.
NEW INTEREST AREA COUNSELLING WANTED!
CO-ORDINATOR
FOR
PSYCHOTHERAPY
&
I am very keen that TypeFace not only reports on news, workshops, conferences and publishes articles on theory development, but that it is also firmly grounded in the applications of type with which practitioners are constantly involved. This means that TypeFace needs a team to cover these different areas. We are currently short of an individual to write, or commission, articles for the Spring and Autumn issues on issues related to Psychotherapy & Counselling.
Would you be prepared to help me? Or do you know someone who it might be worth contacting? Articles should be around 1,600 words long (shorter if diagrams and/or pictures are also included) and, as I said, occur twice a year – not too arduous a load I hope. If anyone is interested, or knows someone who might be, please do get in touch with me, without commitment, to talk about the possibility. My email address is: [email protected] or, if you would prefer, my telephone number is 020-7274 -3809. I look forward to hearing from you.
GILL CLACK (ENFJ) Editor
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TYPEFACE
TYPEFACE ARCHIVE – ‘MILO’ AT CAPT Members are reminded that they can access, download and print all articles published in TypeFace, since its inception in 1989, from the archive created at the Center for Applications of Psychological Type (CAPT) in their bibliographic database MILO. You can also search for articles by author and topic. Follow this link: http://www.capt.org/MILO/TypeFace.htm and you will then be directed to the Index of Volumes and individual articles.
As agreed at the BAPT Conference in 2015, the only exceptions are the issues from the most recent two years and these can be viewed on the BAPT web site in the ‘Members’ Only’ section. If you wish to obtain a copy of any of these articles, then please contact Chris Rigden, Webmaster: [email protected]. GILL CLACK (Editor)
BAPT LIBRARY A VALUABLE RESOURCE FOR YOU!! The BAPT Library is an absolutely fascinating treasure trove for those passionate about type and holds many of the latest publications. Check it out and if you want to have a look at a book before buying it then do think about borrowing it first. The Library holds: Over 90 books on type-related subjects such as type theory, careers and occupations, leadership and team working, spiritual growth, organisational applications, relationships and so on. If you have research/topic specific interest there are thousands of articles in back copies of the following: APT Conference Proceedings ‘Journal of Psychological Type’ (including earlier volumes under its previous name ‘Research in Psychological Type’) Also, back copies of ‘TypeFace’ and APT ‘Bulletin of Psychological Type’’ Tapes and videos Whilst you can now access articles from the Journal of Psychological Type and TypeFace on-line via the Mary & Isabel Memorial Library (MILO) held at CAPT, others are not available digitally.
Interested? Go to the BAPT website at www.bapt.org.uk and look in the Resources section for access to the library lists and information on how to use the library.
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