Character and Personality Type, Discovering Your Uniqueness for Career and Relationship Success

Rating:
Summary: Fresh New Perspective on Personality Type
Review: Dr. Nardi provides the reader with a fresh new perspective on personality type. He leads the reader through a process of uncovering your "whole type" rather than using the individualized letter-introduction of the type "code" ( although he uses the code for reference which is of great benefit to those of use who have been using the Keirsey test for a long time). Dr. Nardi begins by helping the reader identify which of the four temperaments you are by understanding four "intelligences" as well as understanding our "core needs" and "stressors and antidotes for stress" as they relate to our temperament. Immediately following he introduces us to his eight "Life-themes"-8 archetypal, universal perspective from which we all can come from - integrating them with the temperament theory. He then presents the reader with a page of 16 short descriptions with the assumption that by identifying your temperament and life theme you can quickly differentiate your personality type by reading the four descriptions within your temperament. He doesn't stop there though. To help the reader decide on their type and for further explanation he uses the page of descriptions as a bouncing off point to read his monumental "64!" character descriptions. I found the character descriptions in my type did not describe myself, but it helped my see the larger issue that there are a lot of different "types" within my "type"- ENTP. Anyway, I recommend that anyone interested in personality type should have this book. It contributes a healthy new perspective that strays out of the mainstream "box" that everyone seems to be stuck in.

Rating:
Summary: A better book is out there for those new to MBTI
Review: I had already diagnosed myself as Myers-Briggs type INTP before I bought this book. I was rather dissapointed by the lack of depth in behavior analysis of the different types and the "children's workbook" nature of it with all the boxes left for you to write in and lots of space devoted to pointless little cartoons. Perhaps a true sign of my INTP-ness is that I most appreciate a list he has put in the appendix ascribing phrases to what is done by Jung's functions based upon their extraversion or introversion. For instance: Ni, introverted intuition, has always been something difficult for me to get a handle on. What does it do? Nardi annotates Ni with "foreseeing, conceptualizing, understanding complex patterns, synthesizing and symbolizing... *future*". This material has saved the book from a one-star rating from me. Everything else in it is quite readily available for free over the web if you look for it hard enough.

I would strongly recommend Pederson's "Sixteen Men" is an alternative, as it has much, much more revealing "archtype mini-bios" for each personality type and goes more in depth in the problems that will crop up in sexual or social relationships crossing the types. Unfortunately, I am not aware of a similar book focusing on women and their personality types and relationships.

Rating:
Summary: Character and Personality Type: Discovering Your Uniqueness
Review: This is another booklet in the Understanding Yourself and Others series developed by Temperament Research Institute. Dario Nardi co-authored a previous booklet, The 16 Personality Types, with Linda Berens. In this booklet the author is looking at the many expressions of Temperament and Type, giving numerous examples to use to compare with our own journey.

The author has us consider eight life-themes: Physical and Creative (Artisan-like themes), Establishment and Community (Guardian-like themes), Academic and Entrepreneurial (Rational-like themes), and Political and Growth (Idealist-like themes). In each he gives a specific example showing how these can overlay a specific temperament. Each of us has access to all the temperaments, and we often focus on an aspect of another temperament that is not our own. Each life-theme is accompanied by a description of possible pitfalls, showing how being rigidly caught up in the theme can have negative consequences. These are also excellent vignettes to use when clients complain that Temperament and Type just put people into pigeonholes.

The next section devotes two pages to each of the sixteen personality types. Four short biographies of each type are given. These are based on actual people who are very confident of their Type. Often when we think of a type and its components of preferences, we get caught in viewing them in a stereotypical manner. These vignettes show how varied people can be and still express their True Self. The emphasis here is on the various flavours of a specific Type rather than emphasising the underlying Temperament or Type Preferences.

The readers are asked to integrate all that they learned about themselves so far in terms of their temperament, life-themes, best-fit type pattern, and the biographies that matched. Then they are asked to look at the flavours of style. Are they participative or independent? Do they have a local or global perspective? Have they a soft or hard demeanor? Is their attitude mainstream or counter-cultural?

With this information you should be able to locate yourself on your career map: What are your aspirations? How have you actualized your skills? How committed are you to the long haul that may be ahead? Will what you do make a contribution to others?

The topic of relationships referred to in the title is given directly on two pages, but is referred to throughout the booklet. There is also a relationship map with key questions to answer: Is the relationship more than chemistry? How compatible are you? How do you balance intimacy with needs to develop the self? How strong is the commitment to accept the other person as he or she really is?

There are appendices that review some of the basic Temperament and Type theory, as well as answers to some frequently asked questions.

The booklet is useful to people who have gone through the temperament-type process as developed by the Temperament Research Institute. It is a resource booklet meant to be used by a facilitator leading a group or an individual through a career development process. It may help those who are still unsure of the Best Fit Type. This booklet goes beyond the usual way of looking at Type. It will be interesting to see how people respond to these very dynamic descriptions.