Personality Typing: The Bondage of Knowing

INTP: I have now been dissected and analyzed according to modern psychology's form of horoscoping. Knowing my obsession with esoteric subjects, it should be no surprise that I am enthralled and do research on my own time. Yet, myself knowing my own type lends a sort of bondage I have observed in others as well. We know our personality, so we see it. Since we see what is going on––what fulfills, what diverges, what parallels, what rebels––we find excitement in seeing it in other places in and in other people in our lives. Those who have been personality typed start to reflect what they know of their personality even more strongly. They attempt to embody the theorized ideal or scientific summary. I believe personality typing is a modern horoscope––and like the horoscope in ancient days, it is fully socially acceptable. I can say naught bad, though. I think reading horoscopes is fun, and so reading personality typing is also fun, in a sort of what can I get away with today sort of mischief.

What is the full use of knowing one's personality? Twenty years from now, we may pull back the veil and realize that we were duped. We would have chosen carers because a book said it knows us, can read our palms and our minds, told us to take that career choice. I am willing to take such a wager, however, since I knew what I wanted to do before I took any tests. I may have self-determined my life and personality, but––oh, well. The world spins, and a century from now literature students might find our youths and cultures enthralling, and one student may do a paper on any one of us for his Bibliography and Research class. By means of a holographic data base that can read thoughts (what do you bet they still don't have hover cars by then?), he will read about our arcane beliefs in personality typing, and how it related to religious vestiges left over from an expired revival or the innate archetypal urges of the primordial humans––I don't know what Man will think by then.

I digress. I do not know what stock to put into personality typing. I am willing to subject myself to it, to see in it a second, encouraging opinion. I know what I want to do, and I know I am able to because of what? A scientific augur says I can, that I would enjoy such-and-such a career. If this augur helps me persuade others that my hare-brained ideas are not so hare-brained, bravo. I have enjoyed the pursuit of personality typing, and the research thus has provided me with many happy hours of procrastination and interesting conversations with classmates. I regret nothing.