Get to Know Yourself and Others With David Keirsey's Please Understand Me II

“I’m looking for space, and to find out who I am. And I’m looking to know and understand…” This plaintive lyric from John Denver has long been a personal anthem for me, a soul searcher perpetually striving to figure out who I am at the core and what my purpose in life is. It was with this in mind that I took the Keirsey Temperament Sorter a while back. The resulting assortment of letters did not surprise me, as I’d taken the similar Myers-Briggs Type Indicator before and come out the same way, but I was taken aback by the extensive type description, most of which I felt I could have written describing myself. This intrigued me enough to consult the library card catalog and take out Please Understand Me II, Keirsey’s book that divides the 16 personality types into four distinct temperament groups. It made for fascinating reading.

David Keirsey devotes one chapter with many sub-sections to each of the four temperaments, and this is the meat of the book, with about 40 pages per temperament, though surrounding chapters delve into specific issues like romantic pairing and parenting and leadership styles. This muddles the structure of the book a bit; I think with a little reorganization it could have simply been broken up into four parts, with each part having several chapters, and it might have flowed a little more naturally. However, perhaps Keirsey was hoping that if some chapters dealt with all four of the temperaments, readers would be less likely to simply skip to the part that applies to their type.

The book opens with the Temperament Sorter and instructions on how to score it, so anyone who picks up Please Understand Me II without knowing his or her personality type can find out fairly easily. Granted, it’s an imperfect test, and some of the questions are phrased rather strangely, so it’s possible you won’t end up with the most accurate possible result. Still, it will at least give you something to keep an eye out for, and as you read you can debate whether you think the test got it right.

It can also be fun to get friends to take the test or to try to guess at their type based on whether they are more Introverted or Extroverted, more iNtuitive or Sense-oriented, more Thinking or Feeling, and more Perceiving or Judging. Keirsey is an able writer; his descriptions are enjoyable, and he jazzes them up with anecdotes and quotes from people he identifies as having a particular temperament or personality type. It’s more interesting to read each section with particular people in mind, though.

Keirsey’s goal in presenting this information is to convince people that what is normal for one is not necessarily normal for another and that instead of trying to force “Pygmalion Projects” on each other, trying to make others conform to a particular way of thinking or behaving, we should accept each other’s differences and think of the strengths that people of each type bring to the table. My most cherished fictional worlds, from Winnie the Pooh and M*A*S*H to Lord of the Rings, LOST and, most recently, Trixie Belden, celebrate this type of cooperative spirit, so I was very much in agreement with Keirsey’s aims.

The four temperaments he defines are the Sensing-Perceiving Artisans, the Sensing-Judging Guardians, the Intuitive-Feeling Idealists and the Intuitive-Thinking Rationals. Each temperament is further broken down into proactive and reactive pairs, made up of one expressive type and one attentive type. Within each temperament, Keirsey goes through a checklist of attributes that people in this group will typically share. Each section includes a graph that lists 29 different descriptions across seven categories: language, intellect, interest, orientation, self-image, value and social role.

For instance, Keirsey says that Artisans derive their self-esteem from being artistic, Guardians from being dependable, Idealists from being empathic and Rationals from being ingenious. Another characteristic comparison I found interesting was what people yearn for: impact for Artisans, belonging for Guardians, romance for Idealists and achievement for Rationals. Looking it all over at a glance without reading the sub-sections doesn’t mean a whole lot; it’s just a big information dump. But once you’ve read each section, it’s a handy little resource that makes it easier to differentiate among the temperaments.

After the main overview, each chapter includes a breakdown of the four role variants for each temperament. Each type has its own set of particular attributes and a positive one-word descriptive title. Artisans include Promoters (ESTP), Crafters (ISTP), Performers (ESFP) and Composers (ISFP); Guardians include Supervisors (ESTJ), Inspectors (ISTJ), Providers (ESFJ) and Protectors (ISFJ); Rationals include Fieldmarshals (ENTJ), Masterminds (INTJ), Inventors (ENTP) and Architects (INTP). The chapter that interested me most was the one dealing with Idealists, since that is my temperament. This group includes Teachers (ENFJ), Counselors (INFJ), Champions (ENFP) and Healers (INFP).

With few exceptions, I found the commentary on Idealists in general and Healers in particular to be right on target for me, and reading up on the other types and temperaments gave me a better idea of how differently people approach things and how conflicts might be avoided if these varied perspectives were embraced and allowed to complement each other. Granted, two of the Healer’s most definitive qualities are wanting authenticity for themselves and others and wanting to restore unity in the midst of divisions, so he’s preaching to the choir with me, but I think that anyone could find value in Keirsey’s invitation to understand each other’s perspectives more clearly.

Several years earlier, Keirsey published Please Understand Me, which I haven’t read, so I can’t comment on the extent to which this is either a worthy follow-up to or replacement of that book, but as a stand-alone read, it strikes me as very helpful. The four main chapters are organized in exactly the same way, so it’s very easy to skip around and compare and contrast. I didn’t read this book in a very linear fashion myself. While the writing is good, too much at once gets a little dry, and of course within every person are infinite variations, and not everyone will fit neatly into a particular type or temperament. Still, Keirsey’s style is generally engaging, and the categorizations all seem very well thought out. Someone who knows more about psychology than I do would be better qualified to comment on the book’s accuracy and practical applications, but for me, it was an eye-opening and heartening read.