A review by rbkegley
What's Your Type?: The Strange History of Myers-Briggs and the Birth of Personality Testing by Merve Emre

3.0

I've never had a Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) evaluation, but I know many people who have. In some cases, they thought it was somewhat useful, in others they thought it was a waste of everyone's time. I don't know anyone who believed it gave them unique insights into themselves. Merve Emre digs deeply into the origins of the MBTI, uncovering that it was the product of a mostly academically-untrained mother and daughter over a period of 30 years. She manages to pierce the veil of secrecy that the current corporation tries to maintain about the inventors, showing that despite being largely unproven by an statistical methods, it nevertheless has gained an overwhelming share of personality inventory methods. I might have enjoyed the book a bit more if Emre's dislike of Myers and Briggs were less evident, but it was an interesting read anyway.