Who We Are Is How We Pray: Matching Personality and Spirituality

Rating:
Summary: Who We Are Is How We Pray
Review: Keating takes the Myers-Brigg personality test to a practical level in the field of spirituality. He relates the four major personality types to the four major spiritualities of western Christianity. Reading this book was a revelation of my own response to prayer styles and types. As a preacher of the Gospel, the book made me aware of others response to prayer styles also and the need to include each type of pray-er in my instructions. I have begun using this book in spiritual direction and recommend it highly to all who work in group ministry of any sort.

Rating:
Summary: Who We Are Is How We Pray
Review: Keating takes the Myers-Brigg personality test to a practical level in the field of spirituality. He relates the four major personality types to the four major spiritualities of western Christianity. Reading this book was a revelation of my own response to prayer styles and types. As a preacher of the Gospel, the book made me aware of others response to prayer styles also and the need to include each type of pray-er in my instructions. I have begun using this book in spiritual direction and recommend it highly to all who work in group ministry of any sort.

Rating:
Summary: Interesting, but I think the author had more to say
Review: This last work of Keating's is a combination of his work on spirituality with Myers-Briggs personality type theory. I had the feeling that if the author had lived longer, he might have been able to flesh it out more and give it a different organization. He does not presuppose a detailed understanding of Myers-Briggs terminology but gives his own, more or less workable, definitions of the terms. The bulk of the book is a set of capsule descriptions of different actual individuals falling into each of the sixteen types, and what they found useful as spiritual practice and what they did not, according to their personality. Each personality type is covered multiple times, focusing on the E-I, N-S, T-F, and J-P functions separately. There was also a table summarizing each of the sixteen types. I would have liked a companion table describing a reading list for each of the different spiritual teachers (Ignatius of Loyola, Teresa of Avila, etc.) considered with a summary of which kinds of believers would find them helpful or non-helpful. I have not run across another book with this particular emphasis though, so if you are interested I think it could well be worth a look.