The article is meaningless after 10 years A hard look at these common criticisms of the MBTI indicates that none of them hold up. I sometimes wonder if academi

The article is meaningless after 10 years A hard look at these common criticisms of the MBTI indicates that none of them hold up. I sometimes wonder if academics are not a little jealous of the commercial success of the MBTI and therefore look for ways to shoot it down. This does not mean that the MBTI is beyond criticism. As I see it, the major problem with the MBTI is not with the inventory itself, but with the way it is normally scored and interpreted. No personality inventory is reliable enough to sort people into 16 type categories, which is why people can get different type profiles when they take the inventory on multiple occasions. I have always found MBTI useful, especially during initial assessments with clients to assertain the basic structure of personality and how the person interacts with people and the world. Knowing early on whether the client uses thinking, feeling and doing (action) strategies to navigate the world helps to keep the conversation going. In the most basic sense you wouldnt ask a thinker "what do you feel about that?" the thinker would slip into rationalizing, you would instead ask "what do you think about that?" then his mind kicks into gear. Try it out on your friends and see how they respond.