(via cnn dot com)
at least the Jungian system has some ideas behind it. unfortunately, he was also overly fond of quaternities as an intellectual icon. that sort of handicaps the empirical side of post-Jungian typology. there have to be exactly four functions, & two have to be opposites of the other two. and of course, a person has to be this way consistently (if not invariably), so that it can make sense to talk about psychological types as if they were phenotypes. not to mention what factors one's personal history can contribute. none of this is entailed by consideration of the functions themselves, as a scientific theory would require. in that sense it's an ideology.
i think used with flexibility & a fair bit of intuition, they can help make sense of the infinite complexity of human personality. the truth is, it does have regularities. and i believe it is not only possible to recognize some of these particular patterns in individuals, the patterns even appear in fictional characters. unfortunately the use of this mapping-system has been taken over almost exclusively by a bunch of literal-minded people who think that to pigeonhole is to understand, & a lot more who never even bother to read the books before they start flinging the jargon around. maybe one day a more sensitive mapping (i like to say: "256 personality-types") will be devised, & that too will be a service to humanity--just as long as it isn't built into an app that types everyone you point your camera-phone at!
