Was That Really Me?: How Everyday Stress Brings Out Our Hidden Personality

362 Pages·2002·2.39 MB·English

by  Naomi L. Quenk

Was THaT reaLLY Me?
Was THaT reaLLY Me?
HOW EVERYDAY STRESS BRINGS OUT
OUR HIDDEN PERSONALITY
NaomI L. Quenk
TO ALeX
Contents

Foreword
Preface
Acknowledgments
About the Author
1 Jungian Psychology and Hidden Personality
PART 1 THE HIDDEN PERSONALITY IN CONTEXT

2 The Dynamics of Jungian Typology
3 The Effects of Type Dynamics
4 The Dynamics of the Hidden Personality
PART 2 THE HIDDEN PERSONALITY IN ACTION

5 Approaching the Hidden Personality of the Sixteen Types
6 Extraverted Thinking Types: ESTJ and ENTJ
7 Introverted Feeling Types: ISFP and INFP
8 Introverted Thinking Types: ISTP and INTP
9 Extraverted Feeling Types: ESFJ and ENFJ
10 Extraverted Sensing Types: ESTP and ESFP
11 Introverted Intuitive Types: INTJ and INFJ
12 Introverted Sensing Types: ISTJ and ISFJ
13 Extraverted Intuitive Types: ENTP and ENFP
14 When Hidden Personalities Meet
15 In and Out of the Grip
Appendix A: Descriptions of the Sixteen
Personality Types
Appendix B: Selected Quotations from Jung
on His Typology
Notes
Glossary
References
Index
Foreword

I HAVE A VIVID RECOLLECTION OF NAOMI QUENK at the podium before a gathering
® ®
of Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI ) practitioners at a conference in
Philadelphia in October 1982. She was presenting for the first time her
understanding of our “hidden personality,” which causes those unsettling
moments when we are “not ourselves.” Naomi described the different patterns of
uncharacteristic behavior that express each of the eight inferior functions—the
eight Jungian mental processes when they are used in a primitive and
undeveloped manner. Members of the audience were intrigued as they
recognized themselves in her type-related examples of these bewildering
episodes. There was rueful laughter as we remembered behavior we had pushed
aside in denial, shame, or guilt, or that we had readily blamed on others. It was
heartening to be told that these experiences were part of being human; that if we
recognized and faced them, they could serve as invaluable learning experiences
for our personal growth. Naomi gave us specific steps through which we could
integrate these moments and arrive at a more complete experience of our own
positive selves.
Little did we realize at the time that this presentation was the beginning of a
major and invaluable extension of the understanding and application of
psychological type. Over the years, Naomi has led this exploration by gathering
examples of inferior function experiences from workshops, psychotherapy
clients, fellow practitioners, questionnaire data, and personal observations in
everyday life. She used this information as the basis for Beside Ourselves: Our
Hidden Personality in Everyday Life, published in 1993, which was followed in
1996 by a shorter work, In the Grip: Our Hidden Personality (revised in 2000 as
In the Grip: Understanding Type, Stress, and the Inferior Function). And now,
in 2002, we have this revision of the original book, which encompasses a wealth
of new information and fresh insights into the depth and breadth of this aspect of
Jungian psychology. As a result of these works, it is now customary for
knowledgeable practitioners to include an introduction to the “hidden
personality” in their workshops and consulting practices. Being “in the grip,” or
“beside oneself,” has become common terminology among the many individuals
who know their preference type.
Isabel Myers created the MBTI personality inventory to give individuals the
benefits of knowing their Jungian preference type. Her focus was on each
individual’s potential for positive growth through type development. Over the
years, knowledgeable type practitioners have introduced millions of people in
diverse cultures to the MBTI instrument. Naomi Quenk has provided the next
giant step in applying Jung’s model of development in healthy personalities.
That step is to understand, accept, and learn to handle our hidden personality
responsibly. Naomi has given us a way to understand this part of ourselves as
well as a practical guide for turning what appears to be negative into a positive
awareness that enhances our growth and effectiveness. People typically find this
to be a surprisingly freeing experience.
Isabel and Naomi shared a passionate belief that personality type and Jung’s
model of lifelong development provide a psychology that really works. Both
focused their application of Jungian ideas on development in the healthy
personality and worked hard to make these ideas meaningful and helpful in
people’s lives. In the period of reflection preceding my writing of this foreword,
I became even more aware that it is Katharine Briggs, Isabel Myers, and Naomi
Quenk who have been the major forces in bringing Jung’s ideas out into the
wide, wide world—what I have called the democratization of Jungian ideas.
Katharine studied Jung’s work and saw its potential; Isabel took the core piece
(what I think of as the doorway to the entire theory) and developed the MBTI
instrument, which gave individuals the entry key to the entire theory. Naomi has
completed the circle by pointing out the necessity of integrating the light and the
dark that are intrinsic in Jung’s theory. Valuable as the initial understanding of
typology has been, it is this last addition that is essential if we are ever to break
the cycle of violence that threatens to overwhelm our world today.
Katharine Downing Myers
Kennett Square, Pennsylvania
July 2002
Preface

IN THE NEARLY TEN YEARS SINCE Beside Ourselves, the first edition of this book,
was published, I have learned a great deal more about how and when our hidden
personality emerges in daily life. I now have a much greater appreciation of out-
of-character episodes as essential to our general well-being as well as to our
continuing growth and development. I continue to be awed by the overwhelming
evidence that we are born with everything we need to become effective and
complete human beings.
In this new edition, the notion of stress is central. Stress is broadly defined as
any external or internal event that lessens or depletes the energy we typically
have available to conduct our daily lives. I use this expanded definition of stress
to explain and illustrate the ways in which stress is a necessary and sufficient
stimulus for bringing out our hidden personality. My goal is to help readers
arrive at an enlightening and helpful answer to the question “Was that really
me?”
I have often been asked just how and why I became interested in individual
differences in healthy personalities. As with many of my colleagues, my earliest
interest in psychology was in psychopathology. However, psychological
problems—difficult childhood experiences, trauma, deprivation, and so on—
seemed pretty easy to explain. Accounting for psychological health seemed a
much more challenging enterprise. It was therefore fortunate that I was
introduced to psychological type in 1960 on my first day of graduate school in
the psychology department at the University of California at Berkeley. I took the
Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) personality inventory along with a number
of other personality tests. At the time, the MBTI inventory was a little-known
personality instrument used only by a few researchers. Later, when I received
my test results, I was surprised that the description of my type, INFP, was so
positive. Despite my interest in health rather than pathology, I had expected
results that pointed out the negative and pathological.
Over the next several years I learned more about the MBTI inventory through
the creativity studies at Berkeley’s Institute for Personality Assessment and
Research (IPAR). I used the instrument in my dissertation research, although it
was not my central focus. I was impressed with its potential as a vehicle for
exploring normal, healthy human behavior, which continues to be my focus as a
researcher, psychotherapist, teacher, and participant in all other aspects of life.
A major influence that eventually led me to write Beside Ourselves was my
reading of C. G. Jung’s book Psychological Types. Over the course of several
years I read most of Jung’s writings, and my depth and breadth of understanding
vastly increased as I came to understand the overall Jungian context within
which typology exists. I have included a discussion of the inferior function, or
hidden personality, in most of the introductory MBTI workshops I have taught
and have developed workshops that focus specifically on this puzzling, yet
readily understood, aspect of our everyday personality.
Since the publication of Beside Ourselves in 1993, a great many people have
become familiar with their own and others’ inferior function experiences through
reading either the book itself or a booklet-length version called In the Grip
(1996, 2000). Hundreds of people have attended workshops and shared their
experiences and insights, which has formed the basis for this revision.
This revised edition has a simpler explanation of type dynamics, type
differentiation, and type development than the previous edition and includes a
discussion of what each type finds particularly energizing in the workplace. It
focuses in part on expressions of the inferior function that persist over time.
Using our broadened definition of stress, this may be the result of daily stresses,
fatigue, illness, or other disruptions to our available energy. Work stress is used
as an example of the kind of long-term, persistent stress that may keep a person
chronically in the grip, and a new section describes what each type finds
particularly stressful at work. In addition, the large amount of new information
from individuals and groups permitted expanded discussion of the influence of
the tertiary and auxiliary functions on different aspects of the inferior function
experience. Gender differences are included where sufficient information was
available.
New “stories” about people in the grip of their inferior function have replaced
some of those from the first edition. Each of the eight inferior function chapters
contains at least one story that describes the effects of persistent stress and the
chronic grip expressions that occurred. The new stories, as well as the new
quotations from different types that are sprinkled throughout the book, were
obtained from the responses of hundreds of workshop participants,
psychotherapy clients, and others who answered questionnaires or volunteered to
contribute stories for the book. I was fortunate to have questionnaires provided
by a sample of several hundred men and women in their early twenties whose
training program included learning about psychological type and verifying their