The Personality Brokers: The Strange History of Myers-Briggs and the Birth of Personality Testing by Emre Merve

Author:Emre, Merve [Emre, Merve]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2018-09-10T16:00:00+00:00

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Say that you aspire to be the perfect spy. Say you have been told by a government recruiter that soon you will be sent to the countryside to attend a three-day assessment school. He does not specify what you will do at this school. He tells you only that you must go incognito; you must leave behind all letters, books, and photographs, all monogrammed shirts, towels, and handkerchiefs—anything embroidered with your initials. No one at the school will know your name and you will know nothing about the people you meet there. You will be instructed to pick a new name for yourself, the name by which they will address you. The recruiter tells you these precautions are necessary for your safety and the safety of “the organization.”

On the day of your departure, you report to the Schools and Training Headquarters on the corner of Twenty-fourth and F Streets in Washington, D.C. There, inside an unmarked and abandoned brick schoolhouse, you take off all your clothes and destroy any identifying insignia on your underwear and undershirt. You are issued two pairs of army fatigues, your uniform for the next three days. Once dressed, you are ushered into a room with twenty-nine others dressed just like you. You are told to wait and to be quiet. Every so often, someone who cannot bear the silence makes a joke that cracks the air, hangs with unease, and disappears. At five o’clock a sergeant comes in and calls roll. He shouts your name—your new name—and you pause to consider it before responding, “Yes, sir!” You step into a canvas-covered army truck, which will drive for fifteen miles until it arrives at a place the sergeant refers to as “S.” You will never learn what “S” stands for. All you know is that it, whatever it is, has stripped you and your fellow travelers of your social selves—your names, addresses, professions, ranks, all the tangible things you had once appealed to as proof of your existence and your place in the world, all the things that allowed others to recognize you in turn.

Upon your arrival at S, you are surprised by the beauty of the estate and the openness of the fields surrounding it. You had expected to be taken some place dirty, disorderly. You are surprised, too, by the congeniality of the director and his assistant. He gives a short, warm welcoming speech. “Our job,” he explains, “is to seek to discover your special skills, unique abilities, and individual talents in order that they may be put to the fullest use in this organization…Our job here [is] to see that square pegs are not put in round holes.” Over the next three days, you will be subject to dozens of assessments. You will fill out a personal history questionnaire and a health questionnaire, which asks you to list your height and weight and to describe any recurring nightmares you may have. You will take an IQ test,

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