Meet the Experts: Dr. Aqualas Gordon Discusses How He Got Into Jung and Myers-Briggs Personality Type
Dr. Aqualas Gordon, professor of psychology at Maryville College, is an expert in Carl Jung and personality type. In a recently posted exclusive video interview with chartered psychologist John Hackston, he discussed how his interest in the Myers Briggs Type Indicator® (MBTI®) instrument started, and why he thinks a common criticism of the instrument is unfounded. The following article provides some highlights of the conversation.
JH: Hello everybody, today I’m talking to Dr. Aqualas Gordon, or “Quay”, an associate professor of psychological science at Maryville College. His interests and research include psychology, men’s health, mental health issues generally, counseling and human personality. And he’s written numerous research papers, including many that use personality type to look at that part of the human psyche and the Myers-Briggs type model, as well as obviously being a teacher at his university.
Welcome Quay. Tell me, what did I miss when I introduced you?
AG: First it’s very good to be here and, yes, I do wear a lot of hats so no problems missing anything. I will add that I’ve recently started up a clinical practice, so I’ve added another hat to my wardrobe.
JH: Speaking of wearing lots of hats, one thing you were particularly keen to talk about today I believe was some of the work you’re doing validating and researching some of Carl Jung’s personality theories, which serve as the bedrock that tools like the MBTI are built on.
AG: That’s right. I entered academia with an interest in personality. It wasn’t necessarily my area coming in though. I did my dissertation, as you mentioned, on men’s health, and I conduct research on sexuality and gender. But this is something that’s just always fascinated me, and in particular it was something I really got interested in during my clinical internship and my postdoc. I just really got into exploring Carl Jung and this led me down this path, I guess I’ll say serendipitously, to the Myers-Briggs personality assessment. I had of course heard of the Myers-Briggs, but I had no clue they [the MBTI and Carl Jung] were connected. And so after that I really got into exploring this from an academic and a clinical perspective.
JH: Excellent. I know that many people, when they start finding out about Jung, take tools like the Myers-Briggs Type assessment, and often they have an ‘aha’ moment where things click into place and they understand something about themselves. For me it was things about how I react to stress, for example, and why sometimes I’m so certain I’ve told people I’ve decided something and really I haven’t at all. Were there any ‘aha’ moments for you?
AG: Oh for sure. I almost want to pull it out and read it now, but I remember reading from Jung’s psychological types. He’s written a couple essays here and there about this, but I found out he’s got an entire volume where he talks about personality type. And so I picked this book up and flipped to the section on Extraverted Intuition, which is my dominant type, and it just felt like I was reading a biography. It just really clicked for me.
One of the things that really strikes home — and it’s a thing I hear as a criticism of the Myers-Briggs and Jung’s typology — is that it doesn’t give any negatives and all the types are positive. However, that criticism absolutely is not true. I mean, you were speaking to how you react to stress [based on personality type], for example, and Jung certainly goes on and on about what these types are like when they’re not well balanced or when they’re under pressure. And so I think that criticism is pretty unfounded.
So yeah, that was one of the moments for me. I started going around with my friends and reading their type to them and saying, does this sound like you? So even before I was doing real research I was doing a little research on personality type.
If you’d like to hear more of Dr. Gordon’s insights on the MBTI, check out How is the MBTI useful in everyday life, common MBTI misconceptions, and how the MBTI is used in clinical practice.
