Split Personality Crisis

I have encountered personality testing several times during my working life.  Specifically, the Myers-Briggs test which grew up after the war and became widely used for decades thereafter.  It relies on a number of questions about preferences in life from which it deduces a personality type.  There are 16 personality types based upon propensity for Introversion or Extraversion, Sensing or Intuition, Thinking or Feeling and Judging or Perceiving.  Although I understand it might be possible to “game” the system, to mask or accentuate some characteristics and, thereby, appear more suitable to the administrator or future employer, I think I have always tried to answer the questions honestly.  Each time I have come out as an ENTJ.  ENTJs are extraverts who focus on the big picture rather than detail. We are logical and objective decision makers who plan and make decisions early.  We are natural leaders and people tend to flock to us because of our charm and finesse.  If a situation appears out of control, we are the people to take charge.  But don’t expect any sympathy if you are having difficulty keeping up – ENTJs tend to be relentlessly focussed and unforgiving on those who do not shape up to their exacting standards.  Naturally, there are more feely and perceiving types who do not like us at all and it is unfortunate if one of the latter happens to be above you although below works quite well.  Undeniably “the right stuff” for pioneer aviation, we would probably be unwelcome on todays touchy-feely flight decks!  We are also a rare breed with only 1-3% of males fitting the criteria.  Other ENTJs include Napoleon Bonaparte and Margaret Thatcher.  And what is more, Myers-Briggs claims to be 75% accurate!

I had been conditioned to believe that I was born an ENTJ and managed my emotions, both consciously and subconsciously accordingly.  Or did I?  People do change, even subconsciously.  We mimic the attributes of those we admire and eschewe the foibles of those that don’t seen enviable role models. We are all actors, projecting a personality that we want people to believe is the real us.  Yet who is to say that the part we choose to play is not, after all, the real us?  Gaming the personality system may just be a part of a natural evolutionary process and, perhaps, the leopard can change its spots?

So it came as a complete shock, reading Philp Hensher’s review of “What’s Your Type.  The Strange History of Myers-Briggs and the Birth of Personality Testing,” to learn that the whole shooting match has been discredited by academic research and empirical analysis.  What’s more, the authors, Katherine and her daughter Isabel, had no psychiatric training and, according to Hensher, “hardly any interest in empirical truth.”  It has all been a complete confidence trick: thousands of applicants may have been refused employment, life insurance, car loans or even an online date.  Rather like the Emperor’s new clothes, the Myers-Briggs groupthink has been embraced by experts and HR departments all over the world for a generation.  And of course, if we can be duped so successfully by experts in psychometric testing who is to say that climate change scientists and their global warming theories are any more trustworthy?  None of this assuages my indignation of having been brainwashed and obliged to live a lie for decades although the upside is, at least, that I now have the opportunity to re-shape the rest of my life according to contemporary values.  I intend to seize the opportunity of redefining my personality with evangelical intensity.  So, do not expect any more scathing criticism of Brexit backsliding in this column. Instead, much more inclusion and sensitivity.  Readers will find me nodding in solidarity with Laura Kuenssberg or Spreadfear Phil’s new mouthpiece Faisal Islam on Sky News.  Soon people will be commenting that Mushroom has become really woke!  Perhaps.

(I am most grateful to an old colleague and friend in Northumberland for his contribution to the above.  Come to think of it, he probably knows people better than most - without the benefit psychobabble!)

Parliament Should Take a Long Holiday - Until 30 March 2019

During the EU Referendum we were told, ad-nauseum, that the consequences of leaving the EU would be irredeemably catastrophic.  The people, whose decision would be respected by Parliament, voted to leave.  However, incensed by the affront to their monopoly of democratic process, Parliament (geared-up by the ghastly Gina Miller), highjacked the meaning of “leave the EU” and sanctimoniously set about correcting the aberration of the British electorate.  Such is the current confusion and political uncertainty that, whatever happens on 29 March 2019, it appears that the result will, indeed, be irredeemably catastrophic.  We deserve better of those who claim to represent us.

Since the first law of holes is to stop digging, maybe it is time for MPs to step back and take a long holiday, until March 30 next year?  When they return, they may be pleasantly surprised to find that the world has not ended and that, far from being irredeemably catastrophic, the blank piece of paper thus presented affords delightful prospects for the future?