Background

Since ancient times, humans have sought to explain behavior by categorizing personalities into distinct
types.

Historical Perspective

Enneagram

One of the oldest known personality typing methods is known as the Enneagram which categorizes
personalities into 9 numbered types. It is thought to have roots in the sacred geometry developed by
the Pythagoreans 4,000 years ago, and moved through culture and time to the days of Plato, to esoteric
Judaism in the Cabalistic traditions of the Tree of Life, and into modern days.

Hippocrates

In ancient Greece, the great physician Hippocrates believed as long ago as 400 BC that people could be
typed in four distinct categories. These were named “Melancholic”, “Sanguine”,”Choleric”, and
“Phlegmatic” after various bodily fluids that were thought to influence the personality. Each was also
linked to one of the four elements fire, air, water and earth. These types were also called “humors”, and
are now referred to as “Guardians “Artisans”, “Idealists” and “Rationalists”. A brief definition of each is
as follows:

Guardians: fact-oriented

Artisans: action-oriented

Idealists: ideals-oriented

Rationalists: theory-oriented

Carl Jung
Swiss Psychiatrist Carl Jung proposed a model that described eight different personality types based on
whether people were introverted or extroverted, and on how they processed and applied information.
His book, Psychological Types, was written in 1921 and detailed these categories: A sensor is said to use
his physical senses to acquire information whereas an intuitor gathers information based on the
patterns stored in his or her mind internally. A thinker makes decisions based on logic, and a feeler
makes decisions based on emotion. Combining these factors you get the personality types:

Introverted Thinker

Introverted Feeler

Introverted Sensor

Introverted Intuitor

Extraverted Thinker

Extraverted Feeler

Extraverted Sensor

Extraverted Intuitor

William Moulton Marston

The history of personality typing continues in 1926, when a psychologist at Harvard University; William
Moulton Marston, developed the DISC system in his book; The Emotions of Normal People. This system
came into prominence as part of the US Army’s recruitment process during the years preceding WWII,
and then became a popular commercial tool. It categorized human behavior response into four key
areas: Dominance, Influencing, Steadiness, and Compliance. Every individual was thought to be a
combination of these four categories, with one dominant style.

Myers-Briggs

The next prominent method to emerge still in popular use today is the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. This
system, developed in 1958 by Isabel Briggs Myers and Katharine Cook Briggs, is based on the earlier
studies by Carl Jung. The key difference between Jung’s method and the Briggs method is the concept of
auxiliary or “back-up” functions – if a person is an extrovert, for example, their back-up function will be
introversion and will appear when the individual is under stress. It describes 16 basic personality modes
and allows two choices for orientation; E and I for extraversion and introversion, two choices for
information uptake; S for sensing and N for intuition; two choices for judgment, T for thinking and F for
feeling, and two choices for decision making, J for judgment and P for perception. It is believed that
other personality traits such as perfectionism and leadership derive from these basic functions, and that
each of us can be described by a combination of these four letters. This method is highly popular today;
over 4 million people take it annually.

David Keirsey

The history of personality typing "ends" in 1987 with the most recent prominent method, called the
Keirsey Temperament Sorter as developed by psychologist David Keirsey. This method combines the
work of others into one coherent personality typing system; it integrates the four types of Hippocrates
into the Myers-Briggs analysis system to identify one major type of four that individuals fit into. Other
typing methods have been developed since then, but have yet to reach the level of prominence that the
above mentioned methods have achieved