If everyone will forgive my putting my ENTP hat on, it seems hopelessly reductionistic to categorize all people into 16 (or on this version, 32) non-overlapping categories.
I'm not saying that elements of the descriptions can't ring true, even very true. Heaven knows, ENTP describes the kind of person I aspire to be.
But in Myers-Briggs, we're using four independent binary variables to slice ourselves into sixteen segments. That is, whether you're an E is supposed to have nothing to do with whether you're an N, and neither should have any sway over whether you're a T or a P.
But if they were really independent, every segment should be equally common. Yet they aren't. There's a lot more E/ISFJ than E/INTP That kinda suggests that Myers and Briggs already had their categories defined before they set out.
Well, shoot. If M-B already had it all set up, it's not like they were doing anything but intuitive guesswork at best, and at one's most cynical, one might accuse them of simply developing something that would sell a lot of books.
And anyway, people are complicated. Sometimes I'm E, sometimes I. Sometimes S, sometimes N. Depends on my mood, the situation, my company, what's appropriate, the information I have, and so forth. I can be ENTP, but I can be all the others, too.
So me, I enjoy tests like Myers-Briggs. They're fun, and to the extent they cause me some introspection, that can't but be all to the good. Yet I can't take them all that seriously, and I'm certainly not going to imagine that I'm only one type.
