Carol Shumate teaches courses on psychological type at Pacifica Graduate Institute. She is editor of the journal Personality Type in Depth, and author of the book Projection and Personality Development via the Eight-Function Model—a model based on the work of psychiatrist and Jungian analyst John Beebe, and originating in Carl Jung’s work on psychological types. She holds a PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of Colorado, Boulder. Carol is currently working on a book on the trickster archetype in leadership, showing how leaders are pushed to acknowledge and grapple with this paradoxical aspect of the psyche.

In today’s episode of the voice of all things, I talk with Carol about the origins of the MBTI—the Myers Briggs Type Indicator; a personality assessment tool that is widely used for self-development and discovery, as well as in companies and organizations for inter-personal skills assessment and team building. We discuss the development of personality type preferences in individuals, as well as C.G. Jung’s hope that understanding psychological types might lead to more harmonious interactions in our individual and collective lives.