MBTI and Socionics
Many personality typologies emerged from Carl Jung's theory on psychological types, the two that I find the most interesting are:
Myers-Briggs Type Indicator® (MBTI)
The MBTI is probably the most well-known personality theory in the US. It was started by Isabel Briggs Myers and her mother, Katharine Cook Briggs. The personality profiles in MBTI are based on the profiles found in Jung's Personality Types.
MBTI has sixteen personality profiles, which are symbolized by a four letter acronym. Each letter in the acronym represents your preference in following four dyads:
Extroversion<----> Introversion
iNtuiting <----> Sensing
Thinking <----> Feeling
Judging <----> Perceiving
For example, if you are an ESFJ, your preferences would be toward Extroversion, Sensing, Feeling, and Judging.
Myers developed a test to rate a person's preferences. By knowing the preferences, she could predict the person's primary and auxiliary functions, and relate the person's personality type to the functions as described in Jung in Personality Types. I created a table to demonstrate how Myers related the functions to the preferences found in her test.
The strength of the MBTI is the plethora of empirical evidence gathered from years of use. The evidence started to amass from the onset when the Briggs' began testing their theory on relatives. Descriptions of the different personality types were enhanced from the evidence. The current descriptions for a particular types can yield real insight (depending on the author whom you are reading) because they give personal experiences or anecdotes of people with that type. .
For example, I found my reading of my type in Keirsey's Please Understand Me to be pretty accurate. I am drawn to myths, psychology, and religion. I found it interesting that in my small seminary class of 15, three others were my type, which is very infrequent among the general population. (Note that Keirsey actually uses the Keirsey Temperament Sorter, a derivative of the MBTI).
The MBTI does have weaknesses: The test may not yield a correct result (for many reasons) or your personality may span multiple types. Depending on the author that you are reading, the descriptions may be overly generic and not yield useful information. I have also found that its theory on relationships is not as cohesive as that postulated by Socionics. The MBTI does not account for directions of growth (or disintegration) like the Enneagram
Socionics was developed by Aushra Augusta in the 1970's. She developed her theory by combining Jung's psychological types and Kepinski's theory of informational metabolism.
Socionics refers to the same Jungian functions as MBTI: Introversion, Extroversion, etc. However, Socionics was originally developed in a non-English language, and some of the functions are translated using the names that Aushra used. For example, you may see Ethical/Logical instead of Feeling/Thinking, or Rational/Irrational instead of Judging/Perceiving.
Socionics has sixteen types like MBTI (although more types exist with subtypes). The types can be represented using the same four letter acronyms that are used by the MBTI. This can cause considerable confusion since the two theories contain different approaches to interpret personality functions. For example, you may be considered an ISFJ in MBTI while being an ISFP in Socionics.
Socionics helps predict relationships between personality types, because Socionics assumes relationships develop based on differences between the psychological functions of two individuals. The differences determine how information is exchanged between them, and by knowing the functions involved in the interchange, you can predict the positives and negatives of the relationship.
I find that the relationship part of Socionics is its greatest strength. By understanding how different people relate, you can work to improve the relationship. Socionics is beneficial for anyone needing to relate with others, especially counselors and teachers.
The weakness of Socionics is that available information on theory is limited. Most of the books on the topic have not been translated to English. Because Socionics is a nascent system, it has not had time to gather much empirical evidence.