David West Keirsey, PhD (b. August 31, 1921, Oklahoma), is an internationally renowned psychologist, a professor emeritus at California State University, Fullerton, and the author of several books. In his most popular publications Please Understand Me (1978, co-authored by Marilyn Bates) and the revised and expanded second volume Please Understand Me II (1998), he lays out a system of personality classifications, known as the Keirsey Temperament Sorter, which links human behavior to four temperaments and sixteen character types. Both volumes of Please Understand Me contain a questionnaire for type evaluation and detailed descriptions of temperament traits and personality characteristics. With a focus on conflict management and cooperation, Dr. Keirsey specializes in family and partnership counseling and the coaching children and adults. August 31 is the 243rd day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (244th in leap years), with 122 days remaining. ... 1921 (MCMXXI) was a common year starting on Saturday (see link for calendar). ... Official language(s) None Capital Oklahoma City Largest city Oklahoma City Area  Ranked 20th  - Total 69,960 sq. ... A psychologist is a scientist who studies psychology, the systematic investigation of the human behavior and mental processes. ... California State University, Fullerton The California State University, Fullerton (CSUF), often referred to as Fullerton State or Cal State Fullerton, is a part of the California State University System. ... An author is the person who creates a written work, such as a book, story, article or the like. ... 1978 (MCMLXXVIII) was a common year starting on Sunday (the link is to a full 1978 calendar). ... 1998 (MCMXCVIII) was a common year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar, and was designated the International Year of the Ocean. ... It has been suggested that Personality psychology be merged into this article or section. ... The Keirsey Temperament Sorter(KTS) is a self-assessed personality questionnaire designed to help people better understand themselves. ... Behavior or behaviour (see spelling differences) refers to the actions or reactions of an object or organism, usually in relation to the environment. ... Type has historically had the following uses: In biology, a type is the specimen or specimens upon which an original species description is based. ... Conflict management refers to the long-term management of intractable conflicts. ... Psychotherapy is a set of techniques believed to cure or to help solve behavioral and other psychological problems in humans. ...

Education and professional experience

Keirsey earned his bachelor's degree from Pomona College, and his master's, and doctorate degrees from Claremont Graduate University. In 1950, he started his career dealing with youthful mischief as a counselor at a probation ranch home for delinquent boys. Since then, he has spent twenty years working in public schools engaged in corrective interventions, intended to help troubled and troublesome children stay out of trouble. Over the the next eleven years at California State University, Fullerton, he trained corrective counselors toidentifying deviant habits of children, parents, and teachers, and to apply techniques aimed at enabling them to abandon such habits. The Smith Campus Center Fountain at Pomona College during the inauguration of David Oxtoby Pomona College is a small private residential liberal arts college in Claremont, California, located 47 miles (76 km) east of Los Angeles. ... {{Infobox_University |name = Claremont Graduate University |image = [[Image:]] |motto = |established = 1925 |type = Private |president = |city = Claremont |state = [[California |country = USA |grad = 2,033 |campus = Urban, 19 acres/ ha |mascot = |website= www. ... 1950 (MCML) was a common year starting on Sunday (link will take you to calendar). ... Delinquent means one who fails to do that which is required by law or by duty and such failure is minor in nature. ... The term public school has two contrary meanings: In England, one of a small number of prestigious historic schools open to the public which normally charge fees and are financed by bodies other than the state, commonly as private charitable trusts; here the word public is used much as in... California State University, Fullerton The California State University, Fullerton (CSUF), often referred to as Fullerton State or Cal State Fullerton, is a part of the California State University System. ...

Development of Keirsey's temperaments

Keirsey's work can be traced back to the father of medicine, Hippocrates, and to Plato and Aristotle, Among his modern influences he counts the works of William James, John Dewey, Ernst Kretschmer, William Sheldon, Jay Haley, Gregory Bateson, Max Wertheimer, Wolfgang Kohler, Raymond Wheeler, Erich Fromm, Alfred Adler, Rudolf Dreikurs, Milton Erickson, and Erving Goffman. This article or section is in need of attention from an expert on the subject. ... Plato ( Greek: Πλάτων, Plátōn, wide, broad-shouldered) (c. ... Aristotle (Ancient Greek: AristotélÄ“s 384 – March 7, 322 BCE) was an ancient Greek philosopher, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. ... William James William James (January 11, 1842 – August 26, 1910) was a pioneering American psychologist and philosopher. ... John Dewey (October 20, 1859 – June 1, 1952) was an American philosopher, psychologist, and educational reformer, whose thought has been greatly influential in the United States and around the world. ... Ernst Kretschmer (October 8, 1888 - February 8, 1964) German Psychiatrist. ... William Sheldon assinged people to three categories based on their body builds: endomorphic, mesomorphic, and ectomorphic. ... Jay Haley - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia /**/ @import /skins-1. ... Gregory Bateson (9 May 1904–4 July 1980) was a British anthropologist, social scientist, linguist and cyberneticist whose work intersected that of many other fields. ... Max Wertheimer (Prague, April 15, 1880 - New York, October 12, 1943) was one of the founders of Gestalt psychology. ... Wolfgang Köhler (Reval, January 21, 1887 - New Hampshire, June 11, 1967) was a gestalt psychologist. ... Erich Fromm Erich Fromm (March 23, 1900 – March 18, 1980) was an internationally renowned German-American psychologist and humanistic philosopher. ... Dr. Alfred Adler Alfred Adler (February 7, 1870 – May 28, 1937) was an Austrian medical doctor and psychologist, founder of the school of individual psychology. ... Rudolf Dreikurs was an American psychiatrist and educator who developed psychologist Alfred Adlers system of individual psychology into a pragmatic method for understanding the purposes of reprehensible behaviour in children and for stimulating cooperative behaviour without punishment or reward. ... Milton Hyland Erickson, MD (1901 - 1980) was a psychiatrist specializing in medical hypnosis. ... Erving Goffman (June 11, 1922 – November 19, 1982), was a Jewish Canadian sociologist and writer. ...

Isabel Briggs Myers was the first to define the sixteen personality types now used by many researchers and practitioners, and by Keirsey in a somewhat modified form. Keirsey provides his own definitions of the sixteen types initially identified by Myers, based on his studies of the five behavioral sciences (anthropology, biology, ethology, psychology, and sociology). While Myers writes mostly about the Jungian 'psychological functions', thinking, feeling, intuiting, and sensing, which are covert 'mental processes', Keirsey focuses more upon how persons use words in sending messages and use tools in getting things done, which are not covert processess but overt actions. Isabel Briggs Myers (18 October 1897 – May 5, 1980[1][2]) is one of the co-creators of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. ... Behaviorism (or behaviourism) is an approach to psychology based on the proposition that behavior is interesting and worthy of scientific research. ... Anthropology (from the Greek word άνθρωπος, human or person) consists of the study of humanity (see genus Homo). ... Biology is the branch of science dealing with the study of life. ... Ethology is the scientific study of animal behavior considered as a branch of zoology. ... Social interactions of people and their consequences are the subject of sociology studies. ... Carl Jungs autobiographical work Memories , Dreams and Reflections, Fontana edition Carl Gustav Jung (July 26, 1875 – June 6, 1961) (IPA:) was a Swiss psychiatrist and founder of analytical psychology. ... Intuition has many but close meanings across many cultures, including: Quick and ready insight seemingly independent of previous experiences and empirical knowledge Immediate apprehension or cognition Knowledge or conviction gained immediately and without detailed consideration The power or faculty of attaining knowledge or cognition immediately without thought and inference. ...

While Keirsey's main strength may be his accuracy regarding differences in overt behavior, perhaps his most important contribution was his synthesizing Myers' Jungian model of eight 'function types' with Ernst Kretschmer's model of four "temperament types." While Myers proposed a two-dimensional grid based on the assumption that the four pairs of 'introverts' are alike, and that the four pairs of 'extraverts' are similarly alike, Keirsey realigned the pattern in three-dimensions, using the three other trait distinctions (other than introvert/extravert) that better align with a number of existing models, including Kretschmer's, that Keirsey traces back at least to Greek mythology. This article deals with the psychological term Introversion. ... The terms Introvert and Extrovert (originally spelled Extravert by Carl Jung, who invented the terms) are referred to as attitudes and show how a person orients and receives their energy. ... // Greek mythology consists in part in a large collection of narratives that explain the origins of the world and detail the lives and adventures of a wide variety of gods, goddesses, heroes, and heroines. ...

Myers wrote that 1) INTPs and ISTPs are alike; 2) INFJs and INTJs are alike; 3) INFPs and ISFPs are alike; 4) ISTJs and ISFJs are alike; 5) ENFJs and ESFJs are alike; 6) ENTJs and ESTJs are alike; 7) ENFPs and ENTPs are alike; 8) ESFPs and ESTPs are alike. None of these pairings made sense to Keirsey, so he, going with Kretschmer's Hyeresthetics, Anesthetics, Melancholics, and Hypomanics, ascertained that the four "NFs" (iNtuitive/Feeling types) were Hyperesthetic (oversensitive), the four "NTs" (iNtuitive/Thinking) were Anesthetic (insensitive), the four "SJs" (Sensing/Judging) were melancholic (depressive), and the four "SPs" (Sensing/Perceiving) were hypomanic (excitable). At the time (mid-1950s) Keirsey was mainly interested in the relationship between temperament and abnormal behavior, finding that Ernst Kretschmer and his disciple William Sheldon were the only ones who wrote about this relationship. Thus Keirsey discarded the Jungian function model and replaced it with Kretschmer's temperament model. The 1950s were a decade that spanned the years 1951 through 1960. ...

ADHD controversy

Keirsey's stance, regarding ADHD, has led him to count himself among the minority of clinical psychologists who believe that giving psychotropic stimulants to school boys, whose greater activity and/or distractable temeraments are considered disruptive to classroom proceedings, was not only unnecessary but harmful to these boys. Consequently, he acts as an ardent critic against what he sees as an "epidemic abuse of children", and claims to be successful in the management of such children by applying what he calls the "method of logical consequences" (see "Abuse it - Lose it" at [1]). Keirsey asserts that Attention Deficit Disorder was an altogether different matter, in that these children were inactive and paid no attention to the teacher's agenda, and that ADD was defined exclusively by stating what they do not do, and in no way defined their observable behavior. Thus, in his opinion, ADD was a misleading label assigned to children who ignore the teacher while bothering nobody, as do children who are actually disruptive. Since giving them stimulants made no sense, Keirsey refers to the current therapeutical practice of drugging inactive kids as "The Great ADD Hoax". Several of his statements, such as his warning to "make no mistake about the power of Ritalin to disable and eventually shrink the brain" ([2]), while valid to a certain point, are considered to be exaggerations by some and contradict most clinical studies, which are, however, often conducted or influenced by pharmaceutical industry. His main claim is that children with ADHD or ADD have an 'SP', or 'Artisan', temperament (concrete in thought and speech/utilitarian in implementing goals), though it is thought by most other people to resemble those with an 'NP' preference, particularly INTP. Keirsey does acknowledge, however, that those with an NP preference would be subject to frequent misdiagnosis, but the rare rate of NP in the population is insufficient to account for the high rate of ADHD diagnosis); the main types in the school population being SPs and SJs, (or those with (S)ensing preferences) the SPs are the ones that are going to be diagnosed. (See also the Controversy section in the main ADHD article) DISCLAIMER Please remember that Wikipedia is offered for informational use only. ... A psychoactive drug or psychotropic substance is a chemical that alters brain function, resulting in temporary changes in perception, mood, consciousness, or behaviour. ... DISCLAIMER Please remember that Wikipedia is offered for informational use only. ... DISCLAIMER Please remember that Wikipedia is offered for informational use only. ... DISCLAIMER Please remember that Wikipedia is offered for informational use only. ... Methylphenidate (C14H19NO2), or MPH, is an amphetamine-like prescription stimulant commonly used to treat Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) in children and adults. ... DISCLAIMER Please remember that Wikipedia is offered for informational use only. ...

See also

• Anti-psychiatry
• ADHD – a hoax?
• Biological psychiatry
• Chemical imbalance theory
• Myers-Briggs Type Indicator
• Socionics

Beginning in the 1960s, a movement called anti-psychiatry claimed that psychiatric patients are not ill but are individuals that do not share the same consensus reality as most people in society. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ... Biological psychiatry, or biopsychiatry is an approach to psychiatry that aims to understand mental disorder in terms of the biological function of the nervous system. ... Chemical imbalance is a term sometimes used by drug companies [1] in the United States in advertising and consumer literature for psychoactive drugs after the deregulation of pharmaceutical advertising. ... The Center for Applications of Psychological Type is a non-profit organization co-founded by Isabel Myers in 1975 for MBTI development, research and training. ... Socionics is a branch of psychology that is based on Carl Jungs work on Psychological Types, Freuds theory of the conscious and subconscious, and Antoni Kępińskis theory of information metabolism. ...

External links

• Keirsey.com - David Keirsey's homepage (includes comprehensive background on Keirsey temperament sorter)
• CAPT.org - 'The Story of Isabel Briggs Myers', Center for Applications of Personality Type
• Pomona.edu - 'Sorting Temperaments: Psychologist David Keirsey ’47 believes there are four kinds of people in this world. You’re an Artisan, Guardian, Idealist or Rational. You’re born that way. And you’re OK.' (interview), Mark Kendall, Pomona Alumni Magazine