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Re-Modeling the Mind: Personality in Balance
Re-Modeling the Personality in Balance starts with a challenging what if human personality is best understood by looking first at nature and animals? We know that nature's systems are self-balancing, and we know that insects, animals, birds, and insects are born knowing things. Like animals, we carry templates of safety and danger that are inborn---hard-wired---in a very rough outline. Unlike animals, our templates of safety and danger are primarily about how to stay safe from each other, since we are our own greatest predators. Our brains are also part of the natural world and some of its physical laws apply. Like a natural system, the brain seeks efficiency, which means the right balance between habit and chaos. From all this emerges the predictable patterns we call personality. "Re-Modeling" means both creating a new model for how we think about personality, and using it to improve the way we manage our own personalities. The book uses Carl Jung's framework for outlining how the mind takes in and organizes information, and it also uses the Myers-Briggs personality types that many readers are familiar with. However, while the types are recognizably the same, the new model presents different reasons for why they exist, what they mean, and how they work. "Introversion" means being tied to innate animal-like templates of safety and danger, not preferring to be alone. This shift in meaning alters the way we see conscience, learning, and ability to change. And much more. is yours warm or cool? does it match those closest to you, or are you stuck in irreconcilable arguments where each of you is sure the other is utterly wrong? does your personality see life more like Film Noir or Hollywood Classic? Or more like an action thriller or science fiction? How does that alter the way you size up decisions and situations? What does it say about your attention span or tolerance for stimulation? is your personality balanced among its four main functions, or is one of them carrying more of life's chores than it should? This could be why you're mentally and emotionally exhausted even when it looks like you're doing everything right. You may be able to make a few changes in your outer life that help rebalance your brain. when the personalities are put into a chart, which column do you thrive in? And even more importantly, how fast can you learn to spot which column perfect strangers---or those closest to you----fit into? And how can you tweak your responses to them for best results? in the chart, there are four rows that identify personal dominance. How much does it matter to you to have your thoughts and wishes come true? On how much of the world around you would you feel okay enforcing these wishes? the close partnership of marriage means fighting for conscience or dominance will leave wounds that can damage love. If you're already married, how can these ideas help you see the roots of some intractable conflicts? If you're free to make a marriage choice, how can you best plan so that, as you change and grow across a lifetime, you're most likely to still be close? Re-Modeling the Mind addresses some of the hardest questions about who we are, why we do things, and why we can or can't change. It rewards close attention as few personality books can, since it is presenting a model of how we function. Make this model your own, and you'll start seeing questions and answers that no book could address.
354 pages, Paperback
First published July 6, 2015
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19 people want to read
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October 14, 2015
In a Nutshell
You should totally read this book; the author does a great job of describing human people more accurately than any other personality theory I've seen.
Background
The Myers-Briggs system, jumping off of Carl Jung's writings, draws several dichotomies in personalities. The S-N split describes how some people are more concrete and others more abstract. The T-F split describes a person's focus on numbers-thinking versus relationship-feelings. And so on. Books like Kiersey's Please Understand Me II develop the Myers-Briggs formulas into a proper conceptual framework for describing enduring personality traits evinced by people over time.
A New Theory
In Re-Modeling the Mind, the author develops a system of personality which is both new and old. She delves deeply into Carl Jung's writings, "fixing" distinctions that have got lost over time; at the same time, she melds in important features from modern cognitive research, citing relevant studies that provide support and imagery for her distinctions. While she uses the Myers-Briggs letters (I-E, N-S, T-F, P-J), she re-formulates them into a different overall picture of how personality works.
Pros
- The new theory makes many useful observations about real people's actual patterns of thought. I gained much insight into actual people I knew. For example, it had vaguely seemed to me before that there was something similar about my husband and one of our neighbors; now, thanks to this book, I have the vocabulary to describe it: the two of them both have Introverted Intuition.
- The author lays out straightforwardly how to place her personality theory in context; everyone is a unique individual, she firmly acknowledges, and some things are universal to all humans. Personality theory lies between the two; it is the search for which facets of our experience can be expected to continue, to help us predict our future needs. At the same time, she never makes her personality model sound like a one-size-fits-all solution; she has a section dedicated to the ways that her model can be used to understand people who don't fit her model perfectly. (Which is not as contradictory as it sounds.)
- The language of the book is highly accessible. Although the concepts are in-depth, the author does not resort to difficult terminology, instead laying the ideas out carefully, step by step, in normal language. The only "special" terms she uses are the ones she defines herself as the labels for the model.
- Each piece of the model, each segment of the personality theory, is laid out with both a description and examples from literary works. Historical figures are sometimes mentioned, too, to help the reader learn to transpose the theory onto reality for themselves.
- The author is correct that her model is dynamic instead of being a list of traits. Although I have found Kiersey's take on the Myers-Briggs model to be considerably helpful in my life, one complaint I have is that it fails to account for the way that people sometimes exhibit contradictory traits. Johnson's model portrays any individual as having ALL of the basic mental functions, with different orders of dominance. This gives a much greater flexibility to her model, a flexibility that is badly needed in any model hoping to capture the complexity of real people.
Cons
- While readable, the book is dense, with new ideas continually piled on. I had to read most of the book twice before I felt I had got it all straight in my mind.
- The book is not humorous, since it's meant as a scholarly topic. I felt it also would have benefitted from more personal anecdotes (there are three, if I recall correctly) to illustrate the author's model, but I've heard that the author left these out to avoid referencing family and friends without their permission.
Overall
This is a really good book, and I highly recommend it. Understanding why other people don't think the way you do is always a tricky thing for humans, and having a good personality model to help frame your expectations is fundamentally worthwhile.
You should totally read this book; the author does a great job of describing human people more accurately than any other personality theory I've seen.
Background
The Myers-Briggs system, jumping off of Carl Jung's writings, draws several dichotomies in personalities. The S-N split describes how some people are more concrete and others more abstract. The T-F split describes a person's focus on numbers-thinking versus relationship-feelings. And so on. Books like Kiersey's Please Understand Me II develop the Myers-Briggs formulas into a proper conceptual framework for describing enduring personality traits evinced by people over time.
A New Theory
In Re-Modeling the Mind, the author develops a system of personality which is both new and old. She delves deeply into Carl Jung's writings, "fixing" distinctions that have got lost over time; at the same time, she melds in important features from modern cognitive research, citing relevant studies that provide support and imagery for her distinctions. While she uses the Myers-Briggs letters (I-E, N-S, T-F, P-J), she re-formulates them into a different overall picture of how personality works.
Pros
- The new theory makes many useful observations about real people's actual patterns of thought. I gained much insight into actual people I knew. For example, it had vaguely seemed to me before that there was something similar about my husband and one of our neighbors; now, thanks to this book, I have the vocabulary to describe it: the two of them both have Introverted Intuition.
- The author lays out straightforwardly how to place her personality theory in context; everyone is a unique individual, she firmly acknowledges, and some things are universal to all humans. Personality theory lies between the two; it is the search for which facets of our experience can be expected to continue, to help us predict our future needs. At the same time, she never makes her personality model sound like a one-size-fits-all solution; she has a section dedicated to the ways that her model can be used to understand people who don't fit her model perfectly. (Which is not as contradictory as it sounds.)
- The language of the book is highly accessible. Although the concepts are in-depth, the author does not resort to difficult terminology, instead laying the ideas out carefully, step by step, in normal language. The only "special" terms she uses are the ones she defines herself as the labels for the model.
- Each piece of the model, each segment of the personality theory, is laid out with both a description and examples from literary works. Historical figures are sometimes mentioned, too, to help the reader learn to transpose the theory onto reality for themselves.
- The author is correct that her model is dynamic instead of being a list of traits. Although I have found Kiersey's take on the Myers-Briggs model to be considerably helpful in my life, one complaint I have is that it fails to account for the way that people sometimes exhibit contradictory traits. Johnson's model portrays any individual as having ALL of the basic mental functions, with different orders of dominance. This gives a much greater flexibility to her model, a flexibility that is badly needed in any model hoping to capture the complexity of real people.
Cons
- While readable, the book is dense, with new ideas continually piled on. I had to read most of the book twice before I felt I had got it all straight in my mind.
- The book is not humorous, since it's meant as a scholarly topic. I felt it also would have benefitted from more personal anecdotes (there are three, if I recall correctly) to illustrate the author's model, but I've heard that the author left these out to avoid referencing family and friends without their permission.
Overall
This is a really good book, and I highly recommend it. Understanding why other people don't think the way you do is always a tricky thing for humans, and having a good personality model to help frame your expectations is fundamentally worthwhile.
October 29, 2015
I'm only part way through the Re-Modeling the Mind, which I got in the Kindle version, but I stopped to order two copies of the trade paperback to give as gifts -- one to my mother, who has a doctorate in psychology applied to child development, and one for a young friend who has a deeper intuitive understanding of her fellow humans than anyone else I know. I can already see that I'll need to get a few more copies as gifts, particularly for a daughter who just started a career in management, who will find the notes on key external markers of the various personality types and what they want from managers and subordinates to be particularly useful. (My husband can just share mine when I'm done.)
I've been interested in the applications of the Myers-Briggs/Jungian personality matrix since the 1980s, and so started with Part Four: Relationships in Balance, in which Ms Johnston looks at how personality types function at work, in the family, and in marriage. I expected to be informed, as one usually is in a science popularization, but did not expect how often Ms Johnston's words caused me to see incidents and relationships I'd observed over the years in a new light. I'm going to reread this section again before going to the beginning to understand the underlying science and see how the charming drawings I noticed in flipping through the book will fit in. Oh -- and Ms Johnston has whole sections on the various personality parts in literature! But after jumping first to dessert, I am determined to do the rest of the book in proper order. :-)
I've been interested in the applications of the Myers-Briggs/Jungian personality matrix since the 1980s, and so started with Part Four: Relationships in Balance, in which Ms Johnston looks at how personality types function at work, in the family, and in marriage. I expected to be informed, as one usually is in a science popularization, but did not expect how often Ms Johnston's words caused me to see incidents and relationships I'd observed over the years in a new light. I'm going to reread this section again before going to the beginning to understand the underlying science and see how the charming drawings I noticed in flipping through the book will fit in. Oh -- and Ms Johnston has whole sections on the various personality parts in literature! But after jumping first to dessert, I am determined to do the rest of the book in proper order. :-)
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews