Customer Reviews

Gifts Differing: Understanding Personality Type

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If you are at all interested in the Myers-Briggs personality typing system, this book should be number one on your reading list. Unlike 95% of the books on the subject, this one is not a bunch of pop pyschology fluff. This is one of the only books on the subject with any depth at all to it. And it's a good thing it does, seeing as it was written by the co-creator of the MBTI herself, Isabel Myers. Unlike other "Please Understand Me" or "Type Talk", this book actually deals with the Jungian basis of personality, and not just the four letters associated with each type. The Jungian personality typing system is based on the concept of dominant functions. ENFPs and ENTPs for instance are both "Extraverted Intuitives", which is what defines the way they think more than anything. (And ENFJ, on the other hand is an "Extraverted Feeler"). You won't be taught these concepts in most other books on the subject. Isabel also eloquently explains why the MB system is different, especially concerning introverts, from Jung's original system.

If you're interested in MB personality types and actually wish to read a book by some one who knows what they are talking about and isn't just writing to sell pop psyschology best seller, read this book. This is also a must read if you have been trying to reconcile Jung with the MBTI and have had trouble doing so.

If you're interested in the MBTI and you've never read this book before, don't hesitate to buy it! It's a must! And if you don't know about the MBTI and you simply want a better understanding of human diversity/personalities, it's a bigger must read! Everyone would benefit to read it! There's only one chapter that I found less interesting (chap.13). Except that, it was awesome! I'll benefit a great deal!

This book reveals much about the birth of the Myers Briggs personality theory. First, readers can see that the theory has very practical origins. It was born out of observing personalities of MANY people. It was meant to be used in a very hands-on way. It was never meant to be a tool used only by psychologists. It was meant to be used by anyone who wants to understand self and others.

Another key point that emerges from this book is that differences are good. The theory does not treat personality traits as pathological, needing repair. On the contrary, the authors recognize that the varied types of personalities add unique, valuable qualities to the world.

There are other sources that explore this topic in a more detailed, scholarly way. However, this book sets the context for the origin and the intended use of the theory. Therefore, it is a must read for any student of personality.

This book gives an overview of the history and theory behind the widely used Myers-Briggs personality type inventory, and briefly but thoroughly summarizes the characteristics of each personality type as well as the "groups" of related types. This is straight from the horse's mouth: Isabel Briggs Myers and her mother, Katharine Briggs, developed the inventory based on Jung's theory of psychological types, and tested it extensively before it became widely used. The book is generally well organized, easy to read, and clearly written, with occasional touches of humor. But it won't help you identify your type if you don't already know it -- I recommend Kiersey's "Please Understand Me" for that. Still, it's a good resource if you already know your type and want to find out more about it. (Incidentally, you don't have to swallow Jung's psychological theories whole in order to find the Myers-Briggs useful!)

Written with exqusite care, Gifts Differing is one of those rare books to be pondered and reread. I first read it in 1980 when it first came out, and my copy is dog-eared and much underlined. It is not for casual reading, or a quick approach to finding out about one's personality type. Wanting to get Carl Jung's ideas of the psychological types out of the psychiatrist's office into general use, she wrote Gifts Differing to lay out the theory for general readers, with care and in detail. It is a classic, will never be "out of date," and I strongly recommend it for anyone who has been affected by her instrument, the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, and wants to go deeper into the ingenious theory she fleshed out from Jung's work.

I find there are few books as inspiring, deep, necessarily disturbing and as interesting as Gifts Differing. I became interested in this issue by accident and stumbled upon "Gifts Differing". Isabel Briggs had an extrodinary mind and this is shown in the analysis, insight and material in this book. The strong point of Isabel Briggs is she explores the darker sides of the human personality that later writing (i.e., Keirsey) seem to miss out completely and hence are very superficial and unrealistic in their desciptions of human beings. I think there is lots of potential, should she still be alive to adapt and improve this theory. It is a shame that it is mainly a tool for employment consultants, because it is really much more profound that that. If Isabel were alive I would surely want to meet her.

I got this from the library, and I have to say I'm glad I didn't buy it, because once I read it I had no use for it. It's not something you'd want to refer to in the future, unless maybe you were doing a research paper. I thought some of the explanations of the different preferences were interesting. But the writing style was dull. It was a very scholarly book, and thus not particularly readable. It came across as a textbook, which I wasn't expecting for some reason.

_Gifts Differing_ sets out to explain the theory behind the Meyers Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI). I was looking forward to reading this book, because I hoped that it would expand my knowledge and understanding of type theory. I wanted a deeper understanding so I could bring my knowledge of type theory to bear in even more contexts than I do already.

I anticipated an eloquently written and stimulating outline of Type theory, but was discouraged by what I found in the book. The writing was dry and bland, and I often found myself reading several paragraphs before I realized that I didn't remember one thing that I had read.

Also, the book's target audience seemed to be inconsistent. At times the authors seemed to be writing for someone who had never before studied the MBTI, and at other times they seemed to be writing for people who were already expert at the system. For example, they frequently wrote of effect introverted and extraverted forms of a process have on a personality, yet they never explained what the differences were between the introverted and extraverted forms of a function.

The last part of the book contains several chapters which try to relate common experiences to type theory. There's a chapter on marriage, choice of occupation, early childhood learning, and a couple others. These chapters were all duds without exception, and the chapter on childhood was the most irrelevant. They made a brief mention of the cognitive processes at work in early childhood, and spent the rest of the chapter proselyzing on how to raise our children, how we should accept them for whatever type they are, etc..

Overall, this book contained a few nuggets of useful information, but the rest was poorly explained, poorly organized, and poorly written. Not recommended.