Each person has their own unique experience. This forms special personality traits. Even a newborn already has its own character, special facial expressions, recognizable crying timbre. Why do psychologists type people? Psychologist Elena Piotrovskaya explains.
“He counted me!!! He will count you too!” — Calf complained to his mother Cow in a popular Soviet cartoon. His indignation was caused by the Kid. He had just mastered a simple arithmetic operation and joyfully counted everyone in a row.
Since Antiquity, a huge number of typologies and classifications of characters have been created. Psychological tests are incredibly popular. The usual reaction to recognizing oneself in a description is joy: “Oh yes! It’s about me! Exactly.» What was the calf dissatisfied with? Perhaps he did not want to be listed under a serial number for some unknown purpose …
Meanwhile, the knowledge of the cheerful Goat turned out to be very useful: the boat in which the cartoon characters swam could only hold ten passengers. So he counted them, to everyone’s satisfaction.
Determining the characteristics of candidates helps build a team. If its members are to work and/or live together, it is quite reasonable to make their psychological portraits. And thereby minimize the risks of possible disagreements, as they say, on the shore.
Through familiarity with typology, our understanding of “how it happens” with others expands. Self-image can also be ordered, structured. But also to «freeze» too — if we believe that all our qualities are defined and unchanging.
At the heart of any typology are selected signs, properties, and features. Overboard remains the integrity of the individual
Popular at the time, socionics gave detailed descriptions of 16 personality types and recommendations on how to behave with a representative of each of them: what can and what should not be expected from him.
Based on this system, a career guidance model has been created that helps the employee to discover in which areas he will be more successful, and the employer to understand what needs of a particular employee should be satisfied by his work in order to become not boring, but loved. The practical utility of such classifications seems obvious.
And now a rhetorical question. Can the infinite variety of human individualities be reduced to a few types? At the heart of any typology are selected signs, properties, and features. The integrity of the individual remains behind. This integrity, as a rule, is not demanded by society. And often by ourselves. But without it, we do not feel fully ourselves.
Calculating the type of a person, predicting his behavior, giving him recommendations is a technically quite feasible task for a competent professional.
What is qualitatively different from this type of interaction is the encounter with the uniqueness of the Other, with its integrity, with that which defies any classification. There is a lot of uncertainty in such communication, pauses that make it possible to hear the voice of one’s soul.
However, one does not cancel the other, and the path to oneself can begin with a discussion of the questions of a standardized questionnaire. This is if at least one of the interlocutors assumes that “the secret of man is great” and does not come down to clearly measured parameters.