The Fountainhead.

The people in that book, they exist. 

It's not so much that they really do live as the book presents them, because genuine daily life is unruly and I'm not so sure that people can get by being so completely an expression of principle as they do, but those guys are real.  There's some tendentious near-science to prove it.  Oh, I know, this sounds silly, but bear with me.  Check out the Meyer-Briggs Type Indicator.  By that account, we have...

Howard Roark: INTJ
Dominique Francon: INTJ
Gail Wynand: ENTJ
Elsworth Toohey: ENFJ

Now, there're different calculations of how many such people exist per population, but generally it appears, they're rare.  One table has it that in one hundred people, you'll find just two or three of each.  So there's not a lot of those guys running around, but they're there.

Peter Keating is different.  I guess he's ESFP.  Per hundred people, and assuming everyone had horrible childhoods and a biographer like Ayn Rand, then there'll be eight or nine like him.

So, how about that?  Howard and Dominique are the purest of the bunch, and no one in real life can touch them for rigid splendor, but there are people who, quite naturally, believe as those caricatures do and who attempt to live as they would.  It'll take them a beat or two to recognise themselves in print because Ayn Rand hasn't rendered their thinking in very accessible language, but it's there.  Gail might be much more easily recognisable.  Elsworth is probably a surprise.  ENFJ gone bad, or just ENFJ?  Not sure.

So... how about that?


To make this China-relevant... in my brief, perhaps sophomoric burst of interest in the MBTI, I think I can fairly say its terms are cross-cultural.  Various Chinese I know who've taken a look at their supposed type have discovered things they recognise.  So... they're out there.  I've met recognisable, and self-tested, INTJs, ENTJs, ENFPs, ENFJs, INFJs, ESTJs; and a bunch of other common folk too.


So...  whatcha think?  The freakish ideas and lives in that book aren't just anti-socialist polemic.  How about that?




Moi?  INTJ.  Mwahahahah!

I think you readin' too much, boy. Get out and getcha some poontang or somethin'.

Sez the INTP.

ENFJs are catalysts for the growth process.  They bring out the other, activating learning.  INTPs love them for the anchor to the world they are.  And they love INTPs for the deep meaning they bring.  Bunch of sensate Commies.

For INTJ, the ENFJ is an unstoppable force moving in an opposite direction, and if you get one anchored to you, goodbye and God bless to the tattered shreds of everything you've tried to build.  Even if she is tall and loose-limbed and sad-eyed and carelessly beautiful.



So...

They're rare.  They're weird.  They're not the kings of everything, the ENTJ tendency to take over the world notwithstanding.  What's it worth?

MBTI can change with the day and situation.  Whenever I have done the test, the psych running it has always said - in a  work based situation what would you do, or in your personal life what would you do.  And they have always stressed that over time, as you experience different things, then your responses will change.

The majority of Ayn Rand's characters were pretty one dimensional.  Not much growth in most of them.

They hang out with each other.  Of course they're one dimensional.  Grouped together they are bound and determined to not develop emotionally.  See, an -NTJ love fest is all about the world view and the substance of your work compared to it.  None of this NF crap with the immediate harmony zones and the smiling.  Growth is for sissies.



The language of the book is opaque too.  Sometimes massive intuitive leaps are required to connect one expression with another.  It's not a book written for people who like a personal story, even though it is a personal story.

Technically, strictly, it's a book espousing a principle that, like, 4 percent of the population will be in immediate sympathy with, if they can tolerate the book itself.

What's the value?



And the shrink was wrong, wasn't s/he?  The MBTI is a self-report instrument illuminating thinking and action preferences.  Basic preferences would change about as readily as identity would, wouldn't they?  As I understand it, everyone can do all of the attitudes and functions--E/I, S/N, F/T, J/P--they just get really, really tired when they try doing the ones they don't like.

There's a lot of English to go with the MBTI, and a great potential to mislead people.  I feel a lesson plan coming on.

And the shrink was wrong, wasn't s/he?

Not so sure about that.  She had trained as an MBTI analyst and frequently gave the test, analysed the results and talked to clients about the results, including the 'dark side' that most people ignore when they look at the results.  But she was also a qualified shrink and pretty clear about shortcomings of test instruments.

The MBTI may be popular, but that doesn't mean it is accurate.

The primary method for testing reliability is to give the test to a person on two occasions. This procedure is known
as “test-retest reliability." Typically, the test-retest interval can range from several weeks to more than a year.
Because type is said to be a constant characteristic, we would expect that people's personality would not change over
time. Several studies, however, show that even when the test-retest interval is short (e.g., 5 weeks), as many as 50
percent of the people will be classified into a different type.7

In a recent review of the MBTI, commissioned by the Army Research Institute, it was concluded that the instrument
should not be used for career planning counseling.13 The Institute's analysis of the available research showed no
evidence for the utility of the test.

In summary, it appears that the MBTI does not conform to many of the basic standards expected of psychological
tests. Many very specific predictions about the MBTI have not been confirmed or have been proved wrong. There
is no obvious evidence that there are 16 unique categories in which all people can be placed. There is no evidence
that scores generated by the MBTI reflect the stable and unchanging personality traits that are claimed to be
measured. Finally, there is no evidence that the MBTI measures anything of value.

http://www.indiana.edu/~jobtalk/HRMWebsite/hrm/articles/develop/mbti.pdf

Don't get too energetic with that lesson plan!!

I'm going to do it for a few reasons.  One, I'm curious.  Yeah, it's an inaccurate indicator, but I like knowing what people scored.  Two, there's a whole lot of personal preference language that goes with the test.  Three, there's a whole follow up thing, the part where you look at your result and decide if it's really "me."  Lotta language, lotta communicative accuracy issues, lotta stuff to teach or at least try.  And I guess, four, there's a whole pile of speculative, comparative, evaluative language type stuff you can pull out of it for later.  Plus, assuming it doesn't go way off target, it might even be helpful.  I wish I'da known this stuff 20 years ago.

Furthermore, by the MBTI code of ethics, it's more or less immoral to use it if you aren't licensed.  We'll do the lesson, then go out for cheap dvds and knockoff Olympic souvenirs. 

Maybe I'm a little too tickled by the mad scientist aspect of getting everyone typed.


Anyhoo, still curious about reactions to The Fountainhead itself.  Anyone else think it's genuinely descriptive?

I read it a couple of times when I was young, but from memory it was pretty turgid and in the end rally couldn't hold together without an implied enormous death rate of those who were vulnerable.

But you lesson would be just as valuable around star signs, numerology, or Chinese zodiac. Why not do some palm reading with them?

I read it a couple of times when I was young, but from memory it was pretty turgid and in the end rally couldn't hold together without an implied enormous death rate of those who were vulnerable.

A good point, but I think you're referring to Atlas Shrugged, wherein the economy goes into the toilet when the best and brightest go on strike.  Fountainhead is about an architect who blows up the building he designed when someone else modifies his plans without his permission.

But you lesson would be just as valuable around star signs, numerology, or Chinese zodiac. Why not do some palm reading with them?

No, no it wouldn't.  The things you mentioned assign people a type based on arbitrary criteria: birthday, birth year, spelling of name et.al.  The Meyers-Briggs bases its archetypes on the answers you give about your own nature.

As to the assertion "There is no obvious evidence that there are 16 unique categories in which all people can be placed", well, can't people be all placed into one category: We all get hungry?  Or couldn't we differentiate to the extreme point that there are about 6.6 billion categories?

MBTI is a model of human motivation and behaviour.  A model.  Of course it simplifies- by definition. 

People change over time?  To a large extent, yes.  People change according to their mood?  Of course.  I can't see how either of these arguments invalidate the model, beyond cautioning that life is more complicated than 16 categories of 4 criteria.

BTW, I'm an ENFP that borders on ENTP.  I believe teaching kids flipped a very mild tendency over, and at times flips back.

You're right - Atlas shrugged was the one I had in mind. The Fountainhead was much shorter!

I have no problem in taking all sorts of psych tests - but to claim they have a validity and reliability they don't have and then to trust them for 'defining' people is not any more helpful than popularly accepted stereotypes based on race, gender, religion etc.

If they are valid and reliable tests - fine - but otherwise, they really are no more use in defining you than the arbitrariness of stars signs or numbers in your name. And these are more fun, and in the end less damaging.  Invalid and unreliable tests that purport to be scientific and are used for employment purposes, o career guidance or any other thing people want to use them for are damaging to individuals.

And when the test-retest show 50% difference 'labels' - then 50% of people change their answers about their own nature in that time??? or their nature can change in 5 weeks?? Or they don't know their own nature?? Or .. ??

In the binary tendencies- introvert vs. extrovert, intuitive vs. sensory etc., some people have weak, almost neutral scores.  Advanced versions of the Meyers-Briggs address those.

Plus, the very fact that someone's results move back and forth is revealing.

But what if a persons score stays the same after the first and or following tests? Mine have never changed. And I've been through birth, dislocation, marriage, divorce, personal trauma ok, let's cut the PS speak... rape. Who has a study on those whose inner selves remain the same despite  ?

Re: the lesson plan aspect of this thread...

I used it in a lesson a few years ago. I was teaching an Extensive Reading class and the students were English Education majors. The assigned reading was on Learning Styles and I happened to have on my bookshelf, a little book called "People Types and Tiger Stripes" which I had brought with me from home. I decided to extend the extensive reading lesson by adding a short chapter from the "Tiger STripes" book because it was interesting, it took us out of the assigned textbook for awhile, and beause I thought as future teachers, they could benefit from an extended consideration of learning types.

The book, if you can find it, contains a shortened version of the MBTI and after considering the texts in class, I assigned the version from the book as homework (rather than the next boring reading assignment). In the following class, we went through the results and then I presented them with the charts. All along the way, I kept indicating cautions that we were doing this for fun and that the version we were doing was a very abridged version.

The lesson was very successful. The students got into it, if only because it was a change from the normal rituals of an extensive reading class. They didn't take it too seriously (i.e. feel they became fixed types), but it did give them an opportunity for some reflective thought not only for themselves, but later hopefully when they would become teachers. Come to think of it, that class has graduated and haveen teachers for a couple of years now. I still keep in touch with a few. I'll bring up that lesson next time I run into one of them on QQ.

I took a lot of notes on the results, which are buried somewhere in a box at the moment, but I remember finding the results interesting to some extent. I can't recall if it was in the book or in another article I found, but comparing the types "typical" of American students against my class yielded a large difference especially, but not surprisingly, around the E-I criteria.

Anyway, it was a lesson worth doing, it didn't result in any lasting psychological damage to the students, and they had fun with it.

If you can find the book, "People Types and Tiger Stripes", it makes the lesson planning dead easy with copiable resources. And the book is aimed specifically at teachers and learning styles as opposed to other MBTI books which are geared towards career planning and staff evaluation.

Hope this helps in planning your lesson.

I'm sorry people - it is still an invalid test.  Fun yes, but please please DO NOT take it seriously!!!  Bloody hell - look at the angst something like an IQ test causes, and it has way more validity than the MBTI. 

This is NOT a real personality indicator. 

PLEASE go back to numerology, palm reading or star signs.  At least that way you are not purporting to be scientific and you can still talk to people about their own natures.

Even MBTI practitioners acknowledge the flaws in it, AND they talk about the 'dark side' - which NONE of the popular tests acknowledge or give any insight to.

Oh, my God...they're still  on about this!