A Woman's Guide to Personality Types: Enriching Your Family Relationships by Understanding the Four Temperaments

Rating:
Summary: Breezy and Humorous
Review: Donna Partow aims this personality styles training book at women and says she writes for women in the bathroom. This means she tries to have short and useful segments that can be read in stolen moments. The introductory material contains an actual quickie personality test, and an explanation of the classic four-personality-type system. The back of the book has perforated quick-reference cards summarizing the strengths and weaknesses of each personality. Donna follows the practices of Florence and Fred Littauer and renames the personality types so that they all cutely start with the letter "P": Dominant/Choleric becomes Powerful; Influencing/Sanguine becomes Popular; Steady/Phlegmatic becomes Peaceful; and Conscientious/Melancholy becomes Perfect.

The first section of chapters is titled "Understand Yourself"; next is "Understand Your Man", "Understand Your Marriage", and finally "Personalities in Your Children". Inside each section, the four personality types are addressed in turn, enumerating the identifying characteristics, strengths and weaknesses of each.

I found it a bit confusing that Donna tried to separate the strengths and weaknesses of women versus men. For example, separating those of a Popular woman from those of a Popular man. Popular women are listed as having strengths of: talkative, life of the party, motivator, creative, and accepting. Popular men are listed as having strengths of: fires up the troops, great saleman, and great family motivator. Since they are nearly identical, the separation feels artificial and can seem to imply that popular women are not great salesmen or family motivators ... only men. And that just doesn't seem right. The popular man is listed as a poor money manager; but isn't the woman just as prone to that weakness? The man is listed as "prone to wander" (as in infidelity), but isn't the popular woman just as tempted?

As a student of personality types, I found the book most helpful in the areas of identifying clues of personality type in children, and the interaction between the personalities of husband and wife. If you've never read about personality types, this might be a good introduction, but be sure to also read at least one of the classic books like "Please Understand Me:Character and Temperament Types" by David Keirsey, and Marilyn Bates (ISBN 0960695400).

--Lynellen.com