Volume 1, Number 1 June 1998
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Thoughts of Katharine Briggs and Isabel Briggs Myers
The human personality - the richness and fulness of it, the study,
observation and measurement of its impact - "its role in affecting career,
marriage and the meaning of life itself"*, was the "consuming passion"
of Katharine C. Briggs for the latter 50 years of her life.
It was Katharine's deeply held belief that there were differences
and similarities in human personality that varied from individual to individual.
That these unknown differences and similarities could cause untold hurt
in human relationship inspired Katharine to "desire to do something that
might help peoples understand each other and avoid destructive conflicts".*
Briggs' work was being developed simultaneously with - albeit independently
of - that of Carl Jung and she developed a healthy admiration of Jungian
personality typology. Her obsession with her interest impacted the life
of her only child, Isabel, who, though untrained in either psychology or
statistics, utilized her giant mental capacities and innate drive to begin
"the painstaking task of developing an item pool that would tap the attitudes,
feelings, perceptions, and behaviors of the different psychological types
as she and her mother had come to understand them".* Thus was "born
the idea of a 'type indicator'".*
Finally, the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) was developed, "publication of the MBTI transferred to Consulting Psychologists Press (CPP), and the Center for Applications of Psychological Type (APT) was organized..."* An association of users has been formed, a research journal has been established, professional testing standards have been formalized, and the MBTI has eventually - though initially scorned - gained such widespread acceptance and respect that it is the foremost type indicator of its kind worldwide.
