Psychological Profiles / Analysis resources?
August 31, 2011 8:28 AM Subscribe
Psychological profiles and analysis: Help me get inside your head!
I love getting inside other people's head. I've noticed that I spend a lot of my time contemplating what paradigm others are operating from, and what might have led to this.
My challenge now is to move from "armchair contemplation" toward more scientific information. I can't help but draw from my own experience and perspectives in these contemplations right now, and I fear I am getting skewed / inaccurate picture of things.
Barring a graduate education, does anyone know any resources that outline various psychological profiles, with ideally an analysis of how things came to be?
Thanks for your time and effort in advance!
I love getting inside other people's head. I've noticed that I spend a lot of my time contemplating what paradigm others are operating from, and what might have led to this.
My challenge now is to move from "armchair contemplation" toward more scientific information. I can't help but draw from my own experience and perspectives in these contemplations right now, and I fear I am getting skewed / inaccurate picture of things.
Barring a graduate education, does anyone know any resources that outline various psychological profiles, with ideally an analysis of how things came to be?
Thanks for your time and effort in advance!
You also may be interested in the enneagram. Like the Jung and M-B stuff linked above, it's not terribly scientific. But it does dig in to the sorts of questions you are looking at, and I found it more useful than other such systems.
posted by ldthomps at 9:59 AM on August 31, 2011
posted by ldthomps at 9:59 AM on August 31, 2011
Seconding a read of Jung.
That said, countering some other conflations here - Jung did NOT have anything to do with Myers-Briggs, which was created by Myers and Briggs (yep) based on Jungian psychology (without Jung's personal input). Jung was against strict psychological categories; he only theorized general typological profiles and recognized that people evolve and move between them. He was also against the idea of universal symbols. He did theorize archetypes as being templates/potentialities, if you will, but they're just that - templates. It's the individual and their own associations that complete the meaning, and help define and bring into being the potential. What I liked most about Jung is how dedicated he was to the scientific method (if you read him, you will see this) and how adamant he was that the psyche is human, not mystical - although mysterious, but again, because we're human. We can't be all potentialities, so there is always mystery and unknowns
TL;DR yeah, look into Jung :) "Man and his symbols" is a good starting point.
posted by fraula at 10:35 AM on August 31, 2011 [1 favorite]
That said, countering some other conflations here - Jung did NOT have anything to do with Myers-Briggs, which was created by Myers and Briggs (yep) based on Jungian psychology (without Jung's personal input). Jung was against strict psychological categories; he only theorized general typological profiles and recognized that people evolve and move between them. He was also against the idea of universal symbols. He did theorize archetypes as being templates/potentialities, if you will, but they're just that - templates. It's the individual and their own associations that complete the meaning, and help define and bring into being the potential. What I liked most about Jung is how dedicated he was to the scientific method (if you read him, you will see this) and how adamant he was that the psyche is human, not mystical - although mysterious, but again, because we're human. We can't be all potentialities, so there is always mystery and unknowns
TL;DR yeah, look into Jung :) "Man and his symbols" is a good starting point.
posted by fraula at 10:35 AM on August 31, 2011 [1 favorite]
I work in research in a field that is related to psychology, and although I don't have much to do with social psychology, I do hear invited speakers and interact with people that do that sort of research. The two most common personality scales that seem to be widely used in the field are the MMPI, and the Neo five-factor inventory.
A cursory googling should give tons of references to those.
posted by Maxwell_Smart at 10:57 AM on August 31, 2011
A cursory googling should give tons of references to those.
posted by Maxwell_Smart at 10:57 AM on August 31, 2011
I agree that personality psychology might be a good start, and it would also let you know which parts are thought of as more scientific and how the current views are on the different paradigms. I think Funder's The Personality Puzzle would be a great starting book. It's a textbook, but reads more conversational style, and it will include basics on psychoanalytic thought, humanistic theories, trait personality, etc.
posted by bizzyb at 12:20 PM on August 31, 2011
posted by bizzyb at 12:20 PM on August 31, 2011
Look into Neuro Linguistic Processing (usually abbreviated NLP). Take with a HUGE grain of salt. That said, once you know a few of the tricks, it is quite interesting.
posted by digitalprimate at 5:52 PM on August 31, 2011
posted by digitalprimate at 5:52 PM on August 31, 2011
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posted by supercres at 8:35 AM on August 31, 2011