Please Understand Me

Infobox Book
name = Please Understand Me:
Character and Temperament Types
title_orig =
translator =


image_caption =
author = David Keirsey and
Marilyn Bates
illustrator =
cover_artist =
country = U.S.A
language = English
series =
subject = Temperament, Psychology,
Personality description
genre =
publisher = Prometheus Nemesis Book Company
release_date = 1984
english_release_date =
media_type = Paperback
pages = 210
isbn = ISBN 0960695400
preceded_by =
followed_by = Please Understand Me II: Temperament, Character, Intelligence

Please Understand Me: Character and Temperament Types is a psychology book written by David Keirsey and Marilyn Bates which focuses on the classification and categorization of personality types. The book contains a self-assessed personality questionnaire, known as the Keirsey Temperament Sorter, which links human behaviourial patterns to four temperaments and sixteen character types. Once the reader's personality type has been ascertained, there are detailed profiles which describe the characteristics of that type.

Based upon the notion that peoples' values differ fundamentally from one another, Keirsey drew upon the views of several psychologists or psychiatrists: Ernst Kretschmer Erich Adickes, Alfred Adler, Carl Jung and Isabel Myers who are all mentioned as predecessors in the psychology of temperament or personality. ["Please Understand Me", pp.3-4] Of these methods, preference is given to the Myers-Briggs test when determining personality type. ["Please Understand Me", p.4]

ixteen Personality Types

Keirsey and Bates offer a personality inventory to help readers identify their type. The sets of indicated preferences create sixteen types:

*Introversion-versus-Extroversion
*iNtuitive-versus-Sensing
*Thinking-versus-Feeling
*Perceptive-versus-Judging.

An appendix offers a concise profile for each of the possible sixteen types.

Four Temperaments

Then Keirsey simplifies these sixteen types into four groups, whose archetypes he equates with the classical four temperments: Phlegmatic, Melancholy, Sanguine, and Choleric.

*NT (INTP, INTJ, ENTP, ENTJ): Phlegmatic, here called the Promethean or Rational temperament
*NF (INFP, INFJ, ENFP, ENFJ): Choleric, here called the Apollonian or Idealist temperament
*SP (ISTP, ISFP, ESTP, ESFP): Sanguine, here called the Dionysian or Artisan temperament
*SJ (ISTJ, ISFJ, ESTJ, ESFJ): Melancolic, here called the Epimethean or Guardian temperament

Keirsey organizes the groups asymetrically, asserting Thinking-versus-Feeling as the most salient distinction among iNtuitives, but Perception-versus-Judging as the most salient distinction among Sensers. His methodology emphasizes the four temperaments, as he defines them, to generalize about different aptitudes and needs.

There is a sequel, Please Understand Me II (1998), whose methodology generalizes more so according to these four categories.

Footnotes

References

*Keirsey, David & Bates, Marilyn "Please Understand Me: Character and Temperament Types". Del Mar, California: Prometheus Nemesis. ISBN 0960695400