So I took the first test and it says I'm an INFJ:
- You have moderate preference of Introversion over Extraversion (50%)
- You have moderate preference of Intuition over Sensing (47%)
- You have marginal or no preference of Feeling over Thinking (3%)
- You have slight preference of Judging over Perceiving (16%)
In reading the full description, it seems like a lot of it does seem fitting, although there are definitely at least a few things that didn't seem quite right for me. That's sort of the way I've always felt about the Myers-Briggs, it's accurate enough to be interesting, and it seems to work pretty well as a way of categorizing people, but there's always been the feeling for me of something lacking. I do think this particular test was very accurate in it's measures of these particular traits. As I was just telling DesertRose over on another thread, I'm partial to the Enneagram when it comes to personality type systems, and on the Enneagram I am a type 4 with a 5 wing (4w5). Type 4 is in the Feeling triad of the Enneagram, and Type 5 is in the Thinking triad. So I was kind of impressed that this MBTI test picked up on the fact I'm nearly as Thinking-oriented as I am Feeling-oriented.
My love of the Enneagram is due to its complexity and incredible accuracy (ironically I believe these are the very same things that keep many people from learning about the Enneagram - it takes time and effort to learn and understand, and it is so accurate in its descriptions of health levels of the types that it really seems to make a lot of people uncomfortable). The symbol (my avatar) is so beautiful and contains so much information in it. Even in my most agnostic days, seeing the whole of human nature captured so perfectly in a single symbol, with such perfect organization and dynamism, I was hard put to explain how such a thing could come into existence without God, the Creator of All Things.
The Enneagram of Personality is generally pictured with a circle around it, and the nine types placed on the points where the symbol touches the circle, like so:
There are infinite points on a circle, just as there are infinite variations of the basic personality types in humanity. This means that you can literally fall anywhere on the circle in terms of your basic personality. This is where the idea of "wing" comes into play. Most people do not fall directly on the point of their basic type, but rather somewhere in between it and one of the types next to it on the circle. So a type 9 could have an 8-wing or a 1-wing, or in some cases, no discernible wing. A wing can be very heavy (greatly influencing the personality), or barely noticeable at all, or anywhere in between. The basic type is always dominant in the personality, but with a wing there is a blending of the two personalities to create a distinct "subtype". Since there are 9 types and 2 wings for each type, that would make 18 subtypes, which, interestingly enough, is very close in number to the 16 Myers-Briggs types! (Wing is connoted with a "w", for example I'm a 4 with a 5 wing, so 4w5)
The Enneagram also accounts for psychological health, which is really key. Just as there are 9 distinct basic types, there are also 9 distinct levels of health (3 healthy, 3 average, and 3 unhealthy) known as the Levels of Development. Level 1 is the healthiest and Level 9 is the least healthy. The Levels are interesting because two people of the same type but at totally different Levels of Development would at first glance appear to be totally different types! This is because the gifts and strengths of each type become distorted and deteriorated as people become less psychologically healthy. It's important to note that the Levels are not static at all; they are totally dynamic and a person's Level can change from day to day and moment to moment! Rather than thinking of oneself as being "at" a particular level, it's more helpful to look for a range of Levels that you fluctuate between.
The lines within the circle are telling the story of what happens as people become more or less psychologically healthy. If you look at the symbol, you'll see that each type has exactly 2 straight lines connecting it to other types on the circle. Movement toward one is known as the Direction of Integration, and movement toward the other is known as the Direction of Disintegration. So basically, when you're under stress, you'll tend to move towards the type in your Direction of Disintegration. This doesn't mean you
become that type; you're still your basic type and that will never change. What does happen is that you take on certain behaviors of the type in that direction, basically as a coping mechanism. The behaviors you "borrow" will be at the same level(s) of health that you are already at. So if you're a type 1 that hovers around Level 5, under stress you may begin to do things that would be more typical of a type 4 at Level 5.
Likewise, when moving up the Levels, you would begin to embody the healthier traits of the type in your Direction of Integration.
See what I mean about this stuff? I've practically written a freaking book here, and I haven't even said one word yet about what these 9 types are actually like! It's past my bedtime though, so perhaps that is a topic for tomorrow.