Character Analysis
The Prelude Character Analysis is a quick, reliable, accurate and fascinating personality tool helping us to understand people and get the best from them. It is not about pass or fail, right or wrong, good or bad; it is about finding out about you as an individual.
Based on the extensive research of Swiss psychiatrist C J Jung and the subsequent work by Isabel Briggs Myers (1897-1980) and her mother Katharine Cook Briggs (1875-1968) and many others, the Jungian Type Analysis helps assess individuals across a range of four scales and helps build a picture of our particular and significant personal preferences.
It is not meant to try and put individuals in a psychological ‘box’ or to pigeon-hole us as we are all unique. However it is only by 'putting people in boxes' that we can begin to understand them and then 'take them out of the box!' The 'box' is a starting point, not the end point.
If two people, using the Prelude Character Analysis, are recorded as ‘ISTJ’ it does not mean they are exactly the same person in every way. It means they share a series of characteristics. The way in which they process and use information, they way they organise their lives and the way they 'tune themselves' in to the external environment will be similar. This information is invaluable in understanding the person and can be used as the ‘jumping off point’ for an open discussion in recruitment, development, motivation and team building, etc.
In the way that many of us are left or right handed, the principle behind the Prelude Character Analysis is that individuals also find certain ways of thinking and acting easier or more natural than others. Jungian Type places these in a particular order, sorting the psychological opposites into four opposite pairs, or dichotomies, with a resulting sixteen possible combinations.
None of these combinations are 'better' or 'worse', however Jung recognised that everyone has an overall combination which is most comfortable or natural for them; in the same way as writing with the left hand is hard work for a right-hander, so people tend to find using their opposite and less natural psychological preference more difficult, even if they can become more proficient (and therefore behaviourally flexible) with practice and development.
Resources
- Carl Jung
- Character Types
- Frequency of Character Types
- How types see each other
- Creating bridges between types