Four Lenses Unfolded: A Deeper Understanding of Temperament Values

by Nathan Bryce

This comprehensive book will teach you how to understand anyone in the world, motivate reluctant people, communicate with power, succeed in your occupation, strengthen leadership abilities, reduce stress and conflict, parent complicated children, guide troublesome teenagers, teach difficult learners, and create sensational interpersonal relationships. Two decades ago, Nathan Bryce began investigating hundreds of ancient and modern theories on human personality. He believed that this information could help solve many interpersonal relationship problems. This led him to develop a simplified, yet comprehensive theory of his own: the Insight Personality System. In 1994, Bryce invented the Insight Personality Instrument card deck, the first personality test ever to be granted a U.S. patent. Since then he has authored an extensive collection of books, training presentations, course materials, lesson plans, news articles, and multimedia publications. These materials (available at www.insightlearning.org) teach hundreds of cognitive, social, personal, family, and employment skills that help people--regardless of age or background--succeed in life. Perhaps his most important work to-date is this book, Standing Naked in the Shower. In language that's easy-to-read and simple-to-understand, Bryce describes human personality in definitive detail and offers practical insights on applying this information in real-life settings.

381 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2002

Reviews

[Jim Razinha · Rating 2 out of 5]

I know of at least one business entity that has embraced this particular flavor of Jim Jones' favorite beverage and baptized its leadership team in full immersion. I kept hearing "I'm such an orange..." or "Blues will love this..." from lovely, young and naive acolytes who, to me, didn't really have any idea what they were talking about, or how parochial they sounded. When I mentioned to one of the corporate leaders that it might be better to identify the personality types by name instead of arbitrary colors, well...I got a well-intentioned talking to about what color I was and that identifying colors would help me understand the people around me.

Please.

I read a lot on management, and have read a lot on and taken at gun point quadrant "theories" (i.e., Myers-Briggs, Wilbur), and color theories (one developed by a local psychologist that administered a year-long management program I was in). This is a repackaging of so much pop psychology. And sadly disappointing. I'm not sure even someone like Gladwell would buy it. But I will be kind.

There's the usual classifying test to identify your ... color... The initiate is to read a paragraph and decide whether it always, usually, sometimes, seldom or never pertains. Testers are urged to "[a]void making a choice based on particular words or phrases - consider the entire paragraph." There are serious problems with this. Most of those paragraphs have elements at odds with each other. Yes, that would mean partial applicability, but any intelligent mind would ask "why the hell is that in this grouping?" The existence of a test suggests a pretense of science, but no science is presented. No references. None. Bryce sells a schtick that relies upon a distinct lack of critical thinking. There isn't even an index! And no explanation of the colors choice. I had to do a bit of searching on the internet to find out the reasons for blue/gold/green/orange. That would peg me as a "green", in the parlance.

Lots of quotes, though. And most appear to be actual quotes - I like to check them against known sources...if somebody misquotes, their credibility goes down...but that credibility I'll allow Mr. Bryce. Where he and this push fail is in acknowledging that there are no "pure" colors, but then treating the next 350+ pages with repetitious pseudo-analyses, trite diminutive stereotypes, and most definitely segregated advice with respect to those arbitrary personality types (never defined explicitly, rather colloquialized and, as already observed, stereotyped, and always...colored) that never appear "pure" form in nature..."When speaking to Blues, you should..." ad nauseum.

It's entirely possible that Bryce was writing tongue-in-cheek when advising how to work with a guest speaker VIP that is a "Green" (think "analytical"): "If your VIP is wearing a lab coat, has a pocket protector, or is sporting a technical journal..." Sounds like it, right? But then he says "Most Greens have a lot to say that they have suppressed. Once you do break the ice with a Green, you might find yourself drowned in pent-up verbiage." ... and then proceeds to list some words you might hear: "Pentium", "gigahertz", etc. Or Oranges ("active") carrying Sports Illustrated and talking about extreme hang gliding.

This kind of nonsense is disingenuous. And revokes any credibility established with accurate quotes. Reinforces my primary greenery, right?

There are elements of sense, of mostly pop-psych variety, but they are there for a discerning intellect to sift if there is enough patience. The rest is fluff. But that business entity loves it. I might find myself revisiting this. But damn, that subtitle is so off...

[Shannon · Rating 3 out of 5]

I just took the facilitator training for this. I appreciate the time and energy and ability of the trainer. As a concept this is a useful tool, or "common language" to give laypersons to communicate their needs to each other. This is not a psychometric, and it serves its purpose for easy generalizing because it is only four lenses. The layperson would do well to remind zerself that this is, again, not a metric but a way of talking about preferences. Trying to use this to understand someone in a psychological manner would be ill-advised.

I found the mapping of the quadrants onto brain structure to be far too much of a stretch and a caricature of pop psychology. I expected more rigor from a psychologist. However, Bruce seems more interested in aiding communication between people, a noble goal, than furthering psychological knowledge, even if it appears that he create cohesion where there is none.

One would do well to skip the last chapter completely, as it is filed with error. His explanation of both Plato and Aristotle is unforgivable. Either he genuinely misunderstood both, or he attempted to create cohesion where there is none. Since the rest of the chapter had the same four-type model applied over many things, it is difficult to be charitable in the reading.

I will add this to my toolbox of ways to communicate and train my clients and others, but I take much of his far reaching conclusions with a lot of salt. Psychology is experimental philosophy, meaning that it is first and foremost a science. Thus far I've been unable to find any research supporting, or even reviewing, the four lenses model. I am still looking and would like any that another person may find.

[Emily Cook · Rating 4 out of 5]

A study on personality types. Good read!