Product Description

Part of the Understanding Yourself and OthersTM Series

In Dynamics of Personality Type, content expert Dr. Linda Berens introduces you to Jung's eight cognitive processes and the roles they play within your personality type. You are guided to explore the processes through applications to learning, problem solving, and communicating.

This book provides the user with . . .

* an introduction to Jung's eight cognitive processes
* an interactive process to help individuals discover their preferred pattern of processes.
* worksheets to help individuals better understand themselves and others, with applications to learning, problem solving, and communicating.
* full page descriptions for each process with examples and exercises
* an overview on the roles the processes play in our life
* descriptions for discovering your preferred learning style
* worksheet for cracking the MBTI code.
* appendices for a brief overview of the Essential Qualities of the 16 Type Patterns.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #510035 in Books
• Published on: 2000-01-07
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 60 pages

From the Back Cover
"The self
is our life's goal,
for it is
the completest
expression of
that fateful
combination we
call individuality."
-Carl Jung

Like trees in a forest, we depend on processes to sustain our very being. It is easy to see the water on a leaf of a tree and be reminded of some of the tree's life-sustaining processes like evaporation and photosynthesis. Humans have more than physical needs of air, food and water. We have psychological and social needs. We have ways of processing information that keep us psychologically alive. We are not like the trees--planted firmly in the ground and at the mercy of the forces of nature and dependent on the cycles of rain for that which nurtures us. We have some conscious control over our life-sustaining processes--if only we understand them and rise to the challenge of using this understanding in our daily lives.

While there is consistency to our personality type pattern, it is also fluid. We are dynamic--adaptable and responsive to the needs of the moment. And we are constantly developing-- growing and evolving in relation to the demands placed on us. Understanding the dynamics of our personality can help us better express our own individuality, take charge of our learning and growth, and get ourselves out of the swamps and quicksands of interpersonal relationships and life's challenges.

Dynamics of Personality Type: Understanding and Applying Jung's Cognitive Processes takes you deeper on your journey of self-discovery. It explains how you access and gather information and how you evaluate that information. These are the two basic processes you use every minute of every day in every situation. They are your ways of "knowing" that sustain you. They are also the tools you have to help you step outside the limits of your inborn tendencies and the environmental forces that can unconsciously shape your behavior. This book requires your active participation to unlock the dynamics behind the pattern of your own individuality. Use it to help you achieve your life's goal--the complete expression of you.

About the Author
Linda V. Berens
Linda V. Berens, Ph.D. is the Director and Founder of Temperament Research Institute, which provides organizational consulting, training and MBTI qualifying programs. She is the author of Understanding Yourself and Others: An Introduction to Temperament, and coauthor of The 16 Personality Types: Descriptions for Self-Discovery, and Working Together: A Personality Approach to Management as well as numerous training materials. As an organizational development consultant, she applies systems thinking and understanding individual differences to solving organizational problems. She is a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist and Educational Psychologist, and has over twenty-five years experience using temperament and type with individuals and teams and teaching these theories to professionals. Linda is recognized internationally for her contributions to the field of psychological type, for integrating temperament and Jungs typology, and for developing user friendly training materials for practical application of those theories.

Excerpted from Dynamics of Personality Type, Understanding and Applying Jung's Cognitive Processes by Linda V. Berens. Copyright © 2000. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved
From section Dynamics of Personality Type:

Type as a Whole Pattern, Not Just Four Letters

The early developers of the MBTI never lost sight of type as a whole. The limitation of measurement methods and the parts model thinking of the era led to an artificial separation of the dimensions of type outlined by Jung. The organismic, Gestalt-Field-Systems view that lay behind his thinking has come back into the mainstream as the concept of living systems has become more widely embraced.

Now there is a trend toward understanding the type code as representing a pattern of how we use the eight cognitive processes: extraverted Sensing, introverted Sensing, extraverted iNtuiting, introverted iNtuiting, extraverted Thinking, introverted Thinking, extraverted Feeling, and introverted Feeling.

This book is designed to help you understand these processes as they play out in your personality, influencing your actions on a daily basis.

Customer Reviews

Practical material for type professionals
As an accredited MBTI(R) professional, I have been administering the instrument for over 10 years primarily in organizational settings. I really appreciate the practical nature of Berens' book and its immediate applicability to employees in the workplace.

My experience is that many novices in the field of personality type make erroneous assumptions about the way the cognitive processes operate, and confuse Jung's psychological terminology with everyday word usage. For example, some people mistakenly regard a Judging function as being "judgmental". Berens is careful to define her terms (as one would expect an INTP to do), and her descriptions of the way different cognitive processes are manifested are well-researched and well-considered. She manages to keep her descriptions of the functions content-free, and doesn't confuse functions with traits, which so many people mistakenly do.

An error that many people make is assuming that personality type can be explained by simple addition of the component letters in the MBTI code. Nothing could be further from the truth! An ENFP is not E+N+F+P. Berens makes it very clear that, although she is discussing the cognitive processes in isolation, they must always be considered in the context of the "whole" type. This is a valuable distinction that many people, even qualified professionals, often overlook.

There is an unfortunate tendency for people to take the MBTI and assume that the results it offers are final, whereas even the developers of the instrument will tell you that it is never more than 70% accurate. Consequently, many people labor under the delusion that they are a particular type "because the MBTI said so". These people may then read descriptions of their type and become confused or even reject what they read because it doesn't match their own experience.

Berens very sensibly encourages "self-discovery" when it comes to exploring one's personality type. She believes that each person is the best judge of their own type, provided they are given sufficient resources to determine that type. In my experience, the best personality type results are achieved through a combination of live workshops, experiential exercises, and access to a variety of high quality type-related reading materials. The best resources are those which approach personality type from several different perspectives, including the use of an instrument like the MBTI; explanations of Temperament theory; social styles; and cognitive processes. This book is naturally relevant to the latter.

Another valuable section of this book is Berens' interpretation of Dr. John Beebe's archetypal mappings. I've heard Dr. Beebe speak on several occasions and his theories can be quite complex and daunting. Berens simplifies Beebe's ideas without trivializing them, and makes them more accessible to the layperson.

Although this is an excellent book for beginners, it also contains enough "meat" to satisfy an experienced personality type professional such as myself. While it isn't very thick, it contains more useful material than many texts ten times its weight, and has become an indispensable addition to my training toolbox. There are sections on learning styles, interpersonal communication, and problem solving which are extremely relevant in the workplace, and there are a host of exercises and diagrams that assist me when presenting personality type to my clients.

It's worth mentioning here that Berens' book is a relatively recent publication and incorporates many current trends in psychological type that earlier books will not mention. For example, MBTI training originally stressed four "function/attitude" pairs with a distinct hierarchy, and with decreasing proficiency assigned to each. These are often called the four "dichotomies," and they normally consist of choices between E/I, S/N, T/F, and J/P. Harold Grant's work on Type Development advanced the theory that we achieve greater proficiency with each function in our hierarchy as we age.

Nowadays, the prevailing view is that all 8 function/attitudes are accessible, to a greater or lesser extent, to all personality types, depending on a variety of factors, including age and environment. This new perspective minimizes the sort of stereotyping and "pigeonholing" that often occurred with the old methodology. Berens explains this concept clearly and succinctly in this book.

By invoking Jung's original term "cognitive process" to refer to a "function/attitude", Berens follows this modern trend toward terminology that is more representative of the true meaning of those words. Although she uses the familiar MBTI letters in her book, she is careful to explain the psychological meaning of each in order to reduce the confusion that usually arises when explaining these terms.

This is an excellent book, and I recommend it to the psychological type professional and beginner alike.

Delivered what was expected...
Contrary to what some others have said, this book delivered exactly what it said it would. It is cleary a beginners book (only 60 pages) and states up front that was designed for that purpose. The book does not make any promises that it doesn't deliver on. I am an MBTI certified practitioner and felt it gave me the push to the next level that I was looking for. I would agree that Lenore Thomson's book Personality Type: An Owner's Manual is a much more comprehensive resource, but this is a very good starter. I very much appreciated the inclusion/adaptation of John Beebe's work with the Jungian functions that differs slightly from Lenore Thomson's perspective - (I think!). Anyway, the book is a great value and from someone that has been using type since 1985--it's a great resource.

Worst MBTI related published material I've ever seen
This booklet explains how to translate between people's MBTI types such as "INTP" and their cognitive processes such as "dominant Ti with auxiliary Ne." The explanations of the cognitive processes themselves are the worst I've ever seen. For instance, Ti is described by reference to apples as follows: "Think about those apples again. What kinds of things are apples anyway? List the categories that apples fall into." This is incorrect, has nothing to do with Ti (which is a judging function), and promises to be misleading to anyone not already very familiar with MBTI. Some reviewers have noted that other books don't talk about cognitive processes. This is incorrect. Isabel Briggs Myers' Gifts Differing explains cognitive processes and is as a whole an excellent book. Lenore Thomson's Personality Type: An Owner's Manual focuses specifically on explaining the cognitive processes in their dominant and auxiliary roles and does an excellent job of it. Naomi L. Quenk's Beside Ourselves focuses on cognitive processes in their inferior and tertiary roles, and also does an excellent job of it. If the price of those books is what's making you consider buying this booklet, then consider that free explanations of how to translate MBTI types to cognitive processes exist online (teamtechnology in the UK is one site at time of this writing) and that this booklet has nothing else to offer. There's no reason to buy this unless your intention is to mislead someone about the nature of the cognitive processes. As an illustration of the value of this booklet, consider that I gave it as a gift to a friend of mine who is also familiar with MBTI, are who upon reading the alleged description of his dominant function (he's ENTJ), proceeded to put the booklet in the trash. It's that bad. (I'm INTP.)