Books like Please Understand Me: Character and Temperament Types

I have been using the 16 types as an analytical social tool for over a decade, as taught by my Jungian-influenced father. The authors here do credit Jung at moments, but they tend to ignore, underestimate, or occasionally outright reject many Jungian principles in favour of other theories. These newer theories and analyses nearly always felt wrong to me, and didn't fit with my empirical understanding of those around me. For those who care, I'm an ENTJ (close to P).Written in the late 70s, the text also suffers from some rather outrageous ( to the modern, sexually liberated female reader, at least) sexism. Overall I found the section on mating habits and motivations to be wildly inaccurate, and far too forgetful of Jungian origins. According to the authors, types match up best with their polar opposites - I don't find this to be remotely true in reality, not does it make logical sense, so their explanations were painful to read. The insistence on outdated sexual mores (women don't care about orgasm, only want to please their men, are nearly always 'happiest in the home', and so on) riled me further. The dated approach towards sexuality in general came through so strongly in this section that I felt I gained almost nothing from reading it - not even a majority of it resonated with my own thoughts or logical analysis.I agree as well with other reviewers who have criticised the clumsiness of the mythological association and naming of the great 4 types (SP, SJ, NT, NF); I have a substantial background in Greek mythology, which one wouldn't expect from an average reader, and I still found that the approach added nothing, regardless of the power of long-held archtypes. If anything, these classical trappings cluttered what should have been a more systematic and clear-cut explanation of the types. Even had that occurred, I am not sure that looking at those four specific uber-types as being the most important distinctions is accurate. From what I know of Keirsey's revised theory, which splits the types further into 8 and looks at the middle two functions - I think that's a better approach, because in terms of being able to understand people and their motivations - N/S and T/F are by far the most important, in my experience. I/E and J/P are still important, of course, but describe actions more than the thought processes of individuals. If you wonder WHY not HOW, examine those middle modalities.The book was instructive in some ways, despite these flaws; in particular, I found the sections on temperaments in childhood and development very useful and accurate relative to my own observations and conclusions. I have observed that people who focus strongly on self-improvement - especially common in the N types, if we talk about IDENTITY rather than more tangible things like skills - can be difficult to type. I believe that some succeed so significantly in balancing themselves (Ts becoming more F, Fs becoming more T, etc, applied across all the modalities though much less commonly to the N/S trait) that they can appear as adults to be a type other than their 'natural' type.But there is a difference between your innate temperment, something I think is quite firm very early on, and the desire for another temperament. This can botch the questionnaires, too, if a subject answers questions in a way which reflects how he WISHES he were, instead of how he actually is.My point in bringing up these who grow away from their fundamental temperament: you can examine them as children (via memory or talking to parents and such) and retroactively better gauge their type. This information along with current questionnaire results should determine a solid base temperament.The sections on teaching children, learning styles in childhood, and management/team work in adulthood further helped to elucidate & explain one's temperament, with decent accuracy, precision and thoroughness. Again, the use of the 4 uber-types muddles these ideas to an extent, but not too much. I still found these parts useful. Most useful of all, however, were the initial breakdown of modalities in the first section, and the more in-depth Portraits of each of the 16th types in the last section. These are the most clear-cut and logically laid-out, and a strong majority of what I read resonated with truth. I changed my assessments of various people's types based on these two sections, and I feel I now have a better understand of the modalities themselves, as well as how they combine.My next goal is to pursue the earlier, Jungian analysis in formal textual detail, because I suspect I will find that much more useful and illuminating. Still, I learned something here, and I'll keep the book on hand for reference to the type Portraits. Even if flawed, I'm glad to have the extra data and different perspectives.