Other Contemporary Authors on Type
Written by Donwilliams
Many authors from psychology to wellness to business have discovered that typology is more important than most of us ever dreamed. Some of these authors can be found below. We invite you to explore them.
For those wanting to learn more about C.G. Jung, the web site, The C. G. Jung Page at www.cgjungpage.org is the most complete web site available. Information presented includes: articles, papers and interviews, workshop schedules, links to Jungian institutes and related websites, book reviews as well as a glossary of Jung's terminology.
For those interested specifically in falsification of type, one of the most interesting new books is Now Discover Your Strengths. The book, written by a team of Gallup researchers-consultants, Marcus Buckingham and Donald O. Clifton, with the Gallup International Research and Education Center, reveals that Gallup Consulting did a 25-year retrospective study of their global consulting practice in order to understand why the had not been more successful in helping clients achieve their goals. Their discovery and the most significant point in made in the book is that they were not more successful because throughout the world in businesses of all sizes 80 percent of the employees were being encouraged to develop and use their weaknesses rather than their strengths. In other words, they discovered that 80 percent of their clients' employees around the world were falsifying type, and concluded that it was impossible for any business to be highly effective when 80 percent of its workers are falsifying type. The Gallup Findings confirm Dr. Benziger's findings in her book, Falsification of Type, that falsification of type is a tremendous global problem affecting production, individual and corporate effectiveness, health and mental health so dramatically that it can be understood to be as serious as AIDS.
Elaine N. Aron's book, The Highly Sensitive Person: How to Thrive When the World Overwhelms You, reporting the experiences of introverted people living in the United States, continues to attract attention from introverts seeking to understand why they are so overwhelmed. Again, not surprisingly, Aron's work confirms Dr. Benziger's observations in Overcoming Depression, that the American culture tends to have a predictably negative effect on introverted persons such that they report suffering from depression more than the average person. The point that Dr. Benziger has added to the discussion is that the depression is the natural result of these people feeling overwhelmed, the natural result of our 2nd crisis response, conserve withdraw trying to help these people stay alive and survive when they are living continuously in an impossible world.
Robert Fritz's book, The Path of Least Resistance, continues to be a top seller among the self-help books. Fritz's insight that people can make change more often when they are set up and keep the tension between what they want and their current reality. Benziger's use of The path of least resistance includes honoring Fritz's work, and at the same time pointing out that when people falsify type to survive they generally do so using the brain's path of least resistance, across the corpus callosum. For this reason, when people have been wounded early in life their home base is often not their true preference, but the type of thinking across their brain's corpus callosum from their preference - because this is indeed the path of least resistance they take unconsciously in life to try to survive.
Natural Health September-October 1997 Issue contains an article on "Danger: Men At Work" in which the author quotes the president of the American Holistic Medical Association as saying that many people actually get sick and die from holding jobs they dislike. Although the author does not know about Benziger's work with Jung's Falsification of Type, he has observed what Jung referred to as the "serious Costs of Falsification" for the individual and society.
When people do jobs which suit their natural lead function and natural level of extraversion/introversion, they feel happy and internally energized. The dislike here identified as a health risk is generally a powerful inner message that the person is outside their area of natural effectiveness.
The Harvard Business Review July-August 1997 Issue contains an article on "Putting Your Company's Whole Brain to Work" in which the authors suggest that contemporary neuroscience is validating Jung's model; and that businesses are well served to seek to apply at least three key features of Jung's model to assure their success: the four functions or functionally specialized regions of the cortex, the tendency for each person to have only one natural lead, and introversion/extraversion. That the authors are recommending business leaders look to Jung's work is important. For, as they say, less sophisticated models lack a full appreciation of features such as extraversion and introversion. That the authors suggest business look into and apply Jung's model by looking at and using the MBTI assessment indicates only that the authors are unaware personally of the BTSA, which is a solid and important next step beyond the MBTI.
