Enjoy!
-Vicky Jo

There are people in the type community who refer to “The Art of Speedreading People” as “The Art of Speed Stereotyping,” and believe it is little more than pigeonholing. I wonder whether Jung would have appreciated it, given that his preface to the Argentine edition of “Psychological Types” reads in part: “Every individual is an exception to the rule, and fitting such individuals into a rigid system is futile. To stick labels on people at first sight is nothing more than a childish parlor game.”

Many type enthusiasts are addicted to speed over accuracy – and I wonder, how well does that serve? What does it communicate?

Interestingly, I had a class last week where the instructor took the position that speed leaves out soul. I’m still thinking about it, and treating it as an inquiry. To his point, however, there is the following story:

“I would mention the story of the native [African] who had been invited to be driven in a car. After half an hour he asked the people to stop. He stepped out and stretched himself on the ground. They asked him whether he was sick, and he said, “no,” he felt all right, but he had just to wait for his soul that had remained behind, as they went too fast for it.” –C.G. Jung (1961)

In the matter of discerning someone’s psychology (psychology is defined as “science of the soul”), I would worry that soul gets lost in the need for speed.

I might even suggest that this drive “to stick labels on people at first sight” is the biggest complaint I hear about type enthusiasts, and many people are angry and hostile toward the MBTI and type as a result. There is merit in the complaint — all too often type is used to condemn rather than appreciate. It becomes painful when type is used speedily and superficially, rather than deeply and dialogically.

There’s a saying the NRA promotes: “guns don’t kill people; people kill people.” (This justifies their bearing arms, naturally.) And I would twist it for my purposes to say: “type doesn’t label people; people label people.” Type is a wonderful tool, but when it is used poorly (and it often is), lots of damage can be done.

I guess this has been my circular way of asking that we be mindful when we use these tools, and not succumb to speed at the expense of soul.

Fellow INFJ,

I *love* that you are correcting my spelling. An INFJ after my own heart. However, I beg to differ with you.

C.G. Jung, who coined this term “extravert” along with “introvert,” preferred this spelling. To cite the Harvard-educated Jungian analyst, Dr. John Beebe:

‘First of all, remember that you have extraverted, not extroverted thinking, despite the efforts of spell-checkers and dictionaries to conform Jung’s notion of extraversion to parallel introversion, ignoring the Latin root of the word. I prefer Jung’s spelling, because the “extra” reminds me of “Extra, extra, read all about it,” the egregious tendency of extraverted thinking to spread its own point of view as widely as possible.”‘

Lenore Thomson, author of Personality Type: An Owner’s Manual, observes that “it’s downright necessary to maintain Jung’s spelling of the word in so far as it serves to distinguish it as a psychological term rather than a set of behavioral traits — like being assertive, talkative, friendly, etc.”

Another typologist, Peter Geyer, claims that Jung was fond of the spelling “extravert” because he believed that with extraverts you get a little something “extra.”

So while spellcheckers and dictionaries say otherwise, I will stick with Jung’s version — and ironically am in the habit of “correcting” people’s spelling to match THIS version instead.

Wouldn’t it be great if everyone were on the same page with each other?

I’ve observed rampant type bias on the internet with dismay — especially a bias against sensing types, spread of course by those who prefer to use intuiting to gather their information.

People with a preference for Sensing are often called “sensors” in a dismissive tone, and treated as second class citizens. It’s heartbreaking.

One type expert I know stated that this is a natural development for someone first learning type. It’s normal for someone to use type to bolster their projections and feel better about themselves at first. Over time, they will integrate realizations from their acting out, and eventually cease employing type as a means of rejection rather than understanding others.

Is that true?

Did I do that when I first discovered type?

I can’t remember. It was sooo long ago.

I’ll have to take the expert’s word for it.

Although it still bugs me.

The irony is that the person who prefers iNtuiting and is spewing hate and contempt probably had a Sensing type in their life whilst growing up to thank for ensuring they had food in their belly and a bed to sleep in, not to mention keeping the lights turned on.

One of the problems with widespread bashing of Sensing types is how it makes it unsafe for anyone to prefer sensing as their preferred means of gathering information. Many people who know they have a preference for sensing will either deny or even lie about their true preferences, just to avoid being scapegoated.

Years ago someone even accused me of *insulting* someone by wondering whether they had a preference for sensing, as if it were a deliberate slight. Yet, when you hold all the preferences as equally valuable, how can such a suggestion be received as a slight?

And then there’s the shame someone must feel if they have engaged in “sensor bashing,” only to discover they have sensing preferences themselves — who would want to make that painful admission?

Sometimes I let people know that by insulting Sensing types, they are unwittingly insulting my entire family — nearly all my family members prefer Sensing to iNtuiting. Did you really mean to insult my mother…? It’s occasionally useful to remind people that type is personal, and lives in the world with us.

So it’s kinda weird that I would share the following video, since it’s nothing but a hate-mongering rampage.

Here’s why I am.

First of all, it’s a cartoon, so that in itself telegraphs that it’s caricature. Second of all, by watching it, you grasp just how ridiculous the whole proposition is. It gets hilarious after a bit. Ultimately, it embarrasses the hateful person, which may be the reflective mirror someone needs to awaken them to their bias.

In that spirit, I offer it to you now. You may find it a tad jarring. (Warning: it’s filled with profanity.)

I’d love to hear your thoughts. Was it a mistake to share it? Does it encourage, or discourage, reprehensible behavior?

Here are his words:

A few years ago I began investigating the subject of personality type more closely, and in the process I ran into Robin Wiley’s personal INTJ site and Vicky Jo Varner’s INFJ site. While I admired much about Robin’s site, verbally and aesthetically it didn’t “match” me on a deep level. Vicky Jo’s did, strongly. That, plus her suggestion that one might well be mistyped, struck a chord in me, and for that and other reasons, I started wondering if I was actually an INFJ rather than an INTJ. I looked up her Type Insights site and the programs offered thereon, and decided to call her for a free consultation.

Vicky Jo suggested that I was neither INTJ nor INFJ, but was probably either ENFP or possibly ESFP. I found this quite a challenge to my self-image. I decided (thanks to that and other lines of research I’d been doing on my own) that half-measures were no longer enough, and that I needed careful guidance through her complete program.

Learning that my fundamental temperament was not Theorist but Catalyst was a surprise, but not revolutionary to me. An earlier assessment had shown that I basically split the difference between the two; it was a matter of learning which I really preferred (which preference, in hindsight, had actually been strongly suppressed in social contexts). It was when dealing with interaction styles that I began to balk, as I felt that I understood how I dealt with people naturally already. But I stuck with Vicky Jo anyway, knowing that I’d learn much of value regardless. And in the process, I learned the totally unexpected: in the very process of describing how I preferred to interact, I was actually showing that I preferred to interact in another way – and Vicky Jo caught me doing it and pointed it out. That revelation stopped me cold, for it literally challenged the whole framework about how I thought about myself. But there it was: further review of interaction styles, plus cognitive dynamics, plus John Beebe’s archetypes, plus guided exploration of those archetypes as my mind symbolized them, all pointed without question to my “core type” being ENFP, not INFJ. And in time, all this led me to understand why and in what ways I took on the role of an INFJ or even an INTJ in various social and other contexts.

I go into such detail to point out how very easily one can be deceived – both self-deceived and deceived by the world around oneself, not to overlook the limitations of instruments such as the MBTI – as to what one’s personality type really is. What roles one takes on in context and what roles one develops can distort one’s “core type,” the personal paradigm in which one operates the most naturally and easily, almost beyond recognition without skilled outside guidance. And one can be misled by one’s wishes to be something other than what one is. This can happen in several ways. One is the hope of being rare and special, which is what INFJs (for example) are often described as being. But as for me, I wouldn’t trade being an ENFP for anything in the world – now that I understand that is basically how I’m designed to operate. ENFPs ARE rare and special (really, like everyone else). They have strengths and weaknesses (again, like everyone else). They do have a disproportionate influence in the modern world, for good and for evil. But one of the side benefits of my explorations with Vicky Jo is discovering the incredible power of ENFP thinking when rightly guided. I only wish I had known this when I was three decades younger.  My life would’ve been very, very different.

So this leads me to two things in closing. First, my time spent with Vicky Jo’s program is one of the very best investments I’ve ever made. It is eminently worth it to have that caliber of professional guidance, and to follow through on it regardless of what one might think of the results at the moment. To get one’s type “right” and understand what that really implies can be one of the most life-changing experiences there is, especially if one’s long been mistyped as I’ve been. On the other hand, to get one’s type “wrong” can cause subtle yet far-reaching damage to one’s self-image and one’s life. I went through three decades of that and I would urge anyone studying this subject to learn from my example.

Second, patience in these matters is its own reward. Sometimes what one is at the “core” isn’t completely evident until all the data is in. I think that caution applies specifically to ENFPs, who (at the risk of overgeneralization) can find themselves “sincere, but sincerely wrong” all too easily. I would say to any ENFP or possible ENFP: on any subject, not just type, be sure to double- and triple-check both your facts and your assumptions, and then check them again, even when you don’t think you need to! And sometimes that requires outside, expert opinion.

-John Wheeler
The Chronicles of Johanan Rakkav

http://rakkav.wordpress.com

And it’s true — a lot of them do come to me mis-typed.

As Jung said, ““One is always in the dark about one’s own personality. One needs others to get to know oneself.”

I have some programs on the drawing board to help people navigate a process to get their best-fit pattern sorted out because I think it’s sooo important to get it right. When we don’t get that part right, the whole enterprise is somewhat useless.

Kudos to John for trusting me, and sticking with it until he found his true psychological home!
Love you, Sunshine!

At last I am releasing my new multi-media product, “Can You Spot It?: Recognizing the 8 Cognitive Processes.”

This has been a year in the making — I have devoted untold hours of effort toward bringing this dream into reality. I took it back to the drawing board at least three times before it achieved the level of quality that I wanted, and I battled recalcitrant software for months on end, striving to bring it all together.

This product is borne of the frustration I experienced on sooo many levels. Here are a few:

1) As a life coach and Type Discovery expert, there were sooo many things I wanted to communicate about type to my clients that we never had time for. Coaching is not lecturing, so I typically could not share all that I knew about the eight functions to help my clients with their development process. This product addresses that gap. Finally I get to spill what I know!

2) For a long time now I’ve had several type-based websites online with richer and more helpful information than the majority of type-related websites out there. IN SPITE OF THAT, I get emails everyday from people who simply don’t grasp what I’m talking about. It is clear to me that there is an epidemic of type doubt and type misunderstanding out there, and not enough hours in the day to set it straight. This product helps people improve their psychological literacy, which in turn helpa them discover and honor their own best-fit type pattern, AND helps them discern how type shows up in the world in general. Type is sooo much more than an abstract model. We are living and breathing it nearly every moment of every day. This product helps you grasp that.

3) I have repeatedly felt heartbroken at the way some people use type to fuel their biases and bash other type patterns in this ignorance. So I consider this product to be my first attempt at winning the Nobel Peace Prize. I believe it portrays type the way it was always intended, and will help others grasp what the intent underlying this powerful model always was. A whole lot of celebrities are chattering about “consciousness” right now, such as experts like Deepak Chopra, Marianne Williamson, Eckhart Tolle, Gregg Braden, Jack Canfield, Michael Beckwith, etc., who all want to help us evolve our consciousness. And yet they’re missing this piece! Jung was all about consciousness and unconsciousness, and type was a vital aspect of his work. It’s imperative we not abandon that aspect of consciousness and leave Jung out of the conversation.

Those are merely three of the many forces that kept me going with this product, even when I thought I was going to DIE from all the details, when the software crashed and burned and destroyed hours of labor, and when the Blue Screen of Death appeared with regularity on my computer screen. Aghhhhh!

Now for all the effort I’ve devoted to this product for the past year, I should be charging ten times the amount I’m charging for it — yet I made a decision early on that I wanted to share this message with as many people as possible, and strive to positively impact the way people hold type. So I priced it for less than the cost of two coaching sessions (I dare you to find a better deal than this one!). The cool thing is that, by using this delivery method, it’s even more educational than a live, in-person workshop could ever be. It reaches far beyond the limitations of four workshop walls.

Here’s a YouTube I created to whet your whistle and give you an idea of what this product is like, AND if you want to view the full-length version (which is twice as long), I encourage you to hustle to my new website, www.VirtualTypeWorkshops.com and sign up for the FR*EE BONUS, which gives you immediate access.

Whatever you choose, if you are genuinely interested in type, I hope you will avail yourself of this resource. Truly, there is nothing else out there like it, and it will SKYROCKET your understanding of type. I’m confident about that, or I wouldn’t have devoted a year of my life to producing it.

Here’s a peek:

My husband and I are members of some of these various cyber groups, and he recently brought it to my attention that on one of these groups he is a member of, two people of a completely different type pattern joined the list and began deliberately insulting the people of that type pattern, and itemizing for those listmembers what was “wrong” with their type.

It seems like these invaders missed the whole point of what type is about. Sheesh!

Rather than fault-finding and blaming, type theory was always meant to create appreciation and honor diversity. It’s frequently employed to stimulate empathy. It’s designed to be a way of creating space around being together — not providing a new weapon for blaming and cutting others down.

Something I find especially fascinating about that act of hostility (beyond its brazen audacity and bullying behavior), is that the two types which are now at war are referred to by one type expert as “opposing personalities,” and by another type expert as being “attitude-antagonistic” to one another. Thus, a battle of archetypal proportions has been launched, which can never be won nor lost, because the heroes and villains are occupying the psyches of the two types that are at odds.

Below is a conversation and freewheeling psychological analysis I had with my husband about this incident:

The quote I share in the video is this: “Judging others is a way of avoiding a confrontation with our own shadow.” –David Richo

The resource I refer to in the video is this one: The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom by Don Miguel Ruiz It’s not a type-related book per se, but its message is helpful and germane nonetheless. The specific agreement I referred to is “Don’t Take Anything Personally.”

As usual, I have a somewhat contrarian perspective on the matter. It is my belief that the notion that life must be a struggle is linked to two psychological (not historical) precedents.

First is the cultural norm, which in the U.S. is often linked to a psychological types pattern of ESTJ preferences. We are said to have an ESTJ culture in the U.S. The underlying temperament that informs this pattern also appears to be the most common in the culture as a whole (the largest percentage of our population), so no surprise that its mindset would prevail. I refer to this temperament as the “Stabilizer.”

There are many wonderful, admirable aspects to this noble temperament that inform the core of who we are as countrymen and patriots… AND this virtuous temperament can sometimes foster a pessimistic, worst-case point-of-view. In other words, this temperament believes that work is to be taken seriously, and play should be earned. Anyone who does not abide by that mindset is considered frivolous and seldom taken seriously. Even Santa Claus checks his magical list to make sure you have been “good” before you are allowed to have your Christmas gift.

So this is the prevailing attitude of the U.S. Collective, and I think most of us here have some familiarity with that mindset, whether through our cultural myths of hardworking individuals; or through first-hand experiences of its being taught overtly in school; or from reporting to a job where the idea was perpetuated throughout the company culture. It is present in some form all around us — from Boy Scout troops to government institutions (consider the postal service motto, “neither rain nor snow nor dark of night”) to Fortune 500 boardrooms.

Mind you, these are ideals, so even the most straight-laced representatives of this temperament are unable to live up to its impossibly high standards. While it may be easier for people who innately have this temperament pattern to feel validated around their values in this climate, it is still no cakewalk. Stabilizers may require even more help and support than those with less common temperaments to separate from the Collective and forge themselves into unique individuals.

Now, the second psychological precedent is even more pernicious, since it lives within rather than without. Struggle is commonly a byproduct of our Inner Critic, who will frequently push us towards workaholism and suffering, and is anti-life in general. It is often the source of depression, and may go so far as to encourage suicide when one does not live up to its outrageously high standards.

We all have this Inner Critic, and it is probably the shadow archetype most painfully familiar to each of us. Unchecked, the Inner Critic may end up running the show, and perhaps drive us mercilessly into the ground. It is the slavedriver that chains us to the oars and deprives us of food and water as it cracks the whip and admonishes us to work harder harder harder… which coincides with the Collective’s encouragement to also “work hard” and be outwardly “successful” as well. Freeing ourselves from this unconscious prison of suffering typically demands a confrontation and reconciliation of some kind with this disquieting aspect of our Self.

Our tendency to suffering is thus pressured on us from two angles — from within and from without. In this way, these two psychological forces collude and keep many people in our population miserable.

These two powers press on us unrelentingly, and protect the little “s” self, while the oppressed part of us that is entitled to self-expression, along with its accompanying joy and happiness, are aspects of the capital “S” Self that the Collective discourages. Thus, it can be an act of genuine courage to confront this indoctrination in order to embrace grace and flow and ease in our lives in its place, and to take a stand for the capital “S” Self over the little “s” self, which has all odds stacked against it.

“Personality is the supreme realization of the innate idiosyncracy of a living being. It is an act of high courage flung in the face of life, the absolute affirmation of all that constitutes the individual, the most successful adaptation to the universal conditions of existence coupled with the greatest possible freedom for self-determination.” -Jung

I often hear about the historic precedents — the Depression and the Puritan ethics — and I suspect they are convenient “hooks” to hang baggage on that is truthfully generated by these twin psychological cannons aimed at us from the Collective outside and the inner world inside, and our work as individuals is about coming to terms with those psychological forces and reconciling them (and we as coaches support that numinous process).

The fact is, however, the relationships founded exclusively on the being-in-love state can never last. Being in love is a matter for the gods, not for human beings, and when human beings try to claim the prerogative of the gods and live in a state of “in-loveness” (as differentiated from truly loving each other), there is a movement from the unconscious to break it up. A relationship of being in love simply does not last when put to the test of the reality of a true, human relationship; it can endure only in a fantasy world where the relationship is not tested in the everyday stress of real life. When they live together in everyday human conditions, “John and Mary” soon become real to each other as actual, imperfect human beings. The more real they are to each other as people, the less possible it is for the magical, fascinating images from the unconscious to remain projected on them. Soon the state of being in love fades away, and, worse yet, the same anima and animus who once fell in love with each other may now begin to quarrel.   ….

The fact that the state of being in love cannot endure the stress of everyday life is not what we want to hear, at least not in present-day America, which depicts the state of being in love as the goal of the relationship between the sexes, and constantly dangles it in front of our eyes with advertisements on television. Human beings are not very keen on substituting reality for the allurement of fantasies. We prefer to go on looking for the perfect man or woman, that is, the man or woman who will fit our ideal image and guarantee that we are happy and fulfilled, even though it leads to disappointment after disappointment, and adds more and more bitterness to our cup of life.

It should now be clear that to the extent that a relationship is founded on projection, the element of human love is lacking. To be in love with someone we do not know as a person, but are attracted to because they reflect back to us the image of the god or goddess in our souls, is, in a sense to be in love with oneself, not with the other person. In spite of the seeming beauty of the love fantasies we may have in this state of being in love we can, in fact, be in a thoroughly selfish state of mind. Real love begins only when one person comes to know another for who he or she really is as a human being, and begins to like and care for that human being.

No human being can match the gods and goddesses in all their shimmer and glory and, at first, seeing the person whom we love for who she or he is, rather than in terms of projections, may seem uninteresting and disappointing, for human beings are, on the whole, rather an ordinary lot. Because of this, many people prefer to go from one person to another, always looking for the ultimate relationship, always leaving the relationship when the projections wear off and the in-loveness ends. It is obvious that with such shallow roots no real, permanent love can develop. To be capable of real love means becoming mature, with realistic expectations of the other person. It means accepting responsibility for our own happiness or unhappiness, and neither expecting the other person to make us happy nor blaming that person for our bad moods and frustrations. Naturally this makes real relationship a difficult matter, at which one must work, but fortunately the rewards are there too, for only in this way does our capacity for love mature.

-John Sanford, “The Invisible Partners”

I don’t mean your real parents, meaning your biological parents — but who are the people who psychologically nurtured you? Who mirrored you, mentored you, developed you, encouraged you?

Most people can get wrapped around the axle pretty quickly about their families of origin. There’s usually a lot of emotional baggage around that topic. So it’s fascinating to tease out the differences between the ideal and the real. I explore this notion of “psychological parents” in my Youtube below. It runs 8:43 altogether. (It’s long cuz I like to give you lots to chew on!)

The image is a little dark — I apologize. I’m still getting the hang of this stuff. You might want to watch it full-screen in order to see more detail. Enjoy!

Please share your thoughts…?