I very much agree. I suspect that MBTI, and other models, can fall out of favour both because people don't take the trouble to understand it, and because they often mis-type themselves. It's impossible to understand any psychological model in a few soundbites, and finding your best fit type within a model takes a lot of introspection and trial and error for many of us. I wonder how many folks are turned off MBTI, or the Enneagram as well, because they hit on the wrong type, then become disillusioned with it because that's like wearing the wrong sized shoes. We should probably take a number of years before really feeling confident we've hit on our type - and enjoy the fun of the exploration.
Part of the problem seems to me that people think of these models like a GPS of the psyche by analogy, when they are more like a basic 16 point compass. That doesn't make them invalid necessarily, but they are simplified and don't span the whole of our psyches - a lot of stuff on MBTI seems to stretch it beyond what it is made to give. It does seem to provide enough of the basics, doesn't it, to provide a useful structured vocabulary - I find it possible to say things about psychological orientation with far greater precision using MBTI terms that without them.
That's interesting - I don't think it's the same in the UK though. Mind you, I don't think the British have ever been very into such things, except as an amusing and ephemeral Sunday supplement questionnaire pastime. Large companies like the one I worked for trained supervisory staff in it as part of general training courses, but I don't think that happens much here any more. I could be wrong though.
It's really interesting exploring this fault line. Some of those who approach psychology bottom up, from neural science, can seem to get caught up in a logical positivist perspective that insists on reality only being bestowed on the concrete. But on that basis, it's possible not only to dismiss models like MBTI, but the whole of subjective, conscious experience. I look forward to the day when the language of brain bioelectronics can express my experience of the beauty of a red sunset, or the high emotion of the charge of the Rohirrim at the relief of Minas Tirith. Maybe it can be done eventually, but the equivalent is like trying to understand the Lord of the Rings novel by studying the way ink and paper molecules interact with each other, and how paper is made and assembled into a physical book!
It's fascinating to compare MBTI with the Enneagram here, with it's extensive analysis of psychological health levels and how this is manifest in the differentiated and dynamic behaviours within each Enneagram type. In many ways, MBTI is a bit like a branch cut off from the tree of Jungian psychology because Jung created his typology within the wider context of his psychology of the unconscious. I can't find the quote now, but something he commented on has stuck with me for a long time - one of the motivators in creating his theory of types came from the need to approach the same unconscious disorders of his patients from different angles according to their type. He found that the inferior function was a key point of entry into our unconscious minds at the outset of a series of therapy sessions, and it worked far better if he identified which this was from the start. I'm not saying that was the sole or main reason for his typology, because it took off in its own right, but it's only really alive in my view in the context of his wider psychology - perhaps as it has evolved over the last 100 years of course.
Yes, it’s du jour.
This is the result of it being clinically verified. One can thus use it in research.