For full disclosure, I am one of Prof. Emre’s (or Merve as she prefers) former students. I came in with a bias because I knew she was a hardworking, articulate – and without being too grandiose, pretty inspiring – person, and I was curious how her voice would translate to a thought-out written medium.
I picked up this book because I was asked to take a Myers-Briggs type indicator (MBTI) test as part of a training session run by my new company – a corporate behemoth that I had stumbled into from a very academically minded path at University. For several reasons, I asked not to take it. But because I didn’t quite understand these reasons of mine I thought I’d read this book.
What Merve poses as a quasi-biography of the originators of the MBTI I think is a medium for her to explore what it means to understand oneself. Pushing aside all notions of teenagers on double gap years stroking tranquilised tigers in Thailand, understanding what you like and don’t like to do, the way your mind works, and how you express yourself to others is powerful.
Merve shows us how the MBTI morphed from the aspirations of two amateurs – but dedicated and passionate amateurs at that – into a beast that ‘flattens complex personalities’ into 16 categories that is now applied across schools, companies, relationship websites and so on. I finished this book having validated my distrust of the MBTI: it’s inaccurate, it ignores context and complexities to people, and it places limitations and expectations on who you are and how you act. What I didn’t expect to take from this book is an empathy for people that believe and trust in the MBTI. Everyone wants to be part of a group, is that so much to blame?