The Rise Of The Myers-Briggs, Chapter 2: Isabel

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4.8 • 610 Ratings

🗓️ 24 August 2021

⏱️ 21 minutes

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Summary

At first, it seemed like Isabel Briggs Myers would have nothing to do with personality typology. That was her mother Katharine’s passion project, not hers. But when Isabel enters a tumultuous marriage, she discovers that her mother’s gospel of type might just be the thing to save it. In Chapter 2, Isabel picks up her mother’s work, and decides to transform it into a marketable product—but first, she has to convince a group of skeptical PhDs that it actually works. Along the way, one particularly dogged researcher notices some issues with her indicator, threatening to undo everything she’d worked for. If you’re new to the series, listen to Chapter 1. Guest: Merve Emre is a writer and English professor at the University of Oxford. Footnotes & Further Reading: Read Merve Emre’s book, The Personality Brokers: The Strange History of Myers-Briggs and the Birth of Personality Testing. Credits: This episode was produced by Johanna Mayer, Chris Egusa, and Senior Producer Elah Feder. Our music was composed by Daniel Peterschmidt, who also mastered this episode and helped with archival research. We had fact checking help from Cosmo Bjorkenheim. Peter Geyer provided us with archival audio. Nadja Oertelt is our Chief Content Officer.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Just a note that this is chapter two of our three-part series on the Myers-Briggs.
0:04.9	So if you haven't heard the first chapter, we recommend going back and listening to that first.
0:10.5	Okay, here we go.
0:12.7	Now, to begin, I'd like to ask the first question of Isabelle to get our conversation going.
0:19.0	And that's one that many people ask me,
0:21.7	how did you come to create the Myers-Briggs test indicator?
0:26.0	It's a video from 1977.
0:28.6	Isabel Briggs-Myers is 79 years old at this point.
0:31.8	She's seated against a red brick wall,
0:34.0	surrounded by four Myers-Briggs devotees.
0:37.4	There's a bit of construction in the background,
0:39.7	but they are totally focused on Isabel, taking turns, asking her questions. And they want her to
0:45.8	tell the story again. How did it all start? Well, I suppose the very beginning of it was that I fell in love with a man who was different
0:55.8	from me on three of the four preferences that made types.
1:01.7	And this was noticed by my family that here was something different, admirable but different.
1:10.6	His name was Clarence, but everyone called him chief.
1:14.5	At first, he threatened to drive a wedge between Isabel and her mother, but eventually their
1:19.9	marriage is what would convert her to Catherine's Gospel of Type. But where Catherine saw a religion of personality, Isabel saw a product with world-changing potential.
1:35.3	And now, as most of you know, it has become one of the most widely used instruments for everyday people.
1:43.3	I just find it curious.
1:45.3	It's widely used in industry.
1:47.8	It's even used in the military.
	...

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