'please understand me' essential?

I personally think Please Understand Me by Keirsey and Bates is essential reading (and using!) Anyone agree?

First, wow, there's a group for INFP's?

Second, I love that book. A colleague of mine at the university gave me a copy (she is an INTP) a few years back and it really opened my mind to so many things. It changed the way I interact with people, and it made me quit beating myself up so much for my supposed shortcomings. There is so much I could say about this book.

I haven't read that book. However, once I was at a professional dinner of life insurance actuaries. Of the entire gathering of perhaps 100 people, about 95% were INTJs. I was stunned! No wonder I had such a difficult time with my bosses! I would know that there would be an error in the numbers, and eventually find it. They would always think that I was wasting time. They would never understand my reasons for suspecting there was a problem, even once I had found and demonstrated it!

Even when an actuary whose mistake I caught once apologized to me, and respected me thereafter. I was given a poor performance review, for "wasting time" for investigating something "that might not have been a problem."

Some reports that I was given to write were so bad, that correcting the numbers caused major disruptions in management forecasts. My corrected report was not ever released officially, but instead was "leaked" to those who needed it.

I think I was labeled as a "troublemaker," when I was just trying to do the best job I could.

The strange thing was, that in all of my assignments, I always wound up being the communicator with the computer programmers, because noone else would bother to understand them. Why couldn't I communicate with my bosses? (OOPS maybe it was them, being INTJs)

Certainly there are drastic differences between INFPs and INTJs! Once I had a job interview with several INTJs, and I kept thinking, "They're looking at me like I'm a flake!" (LOL) NOw, I don't know if this is even true, but I felt intimidated by them. However, they may just as well have been thinking nice things about me. ( I didn't get the job)

Actually, I was fired from that job, after seven years!

But I would get in trouble with my bosses, I would ask if they wanted a two-hour calculation, or the two-week calculation. Then I would explain the diference, and then they would want the two week calculation in two hours.

When I started my job (mid 80s), I asked if I could have a calculator with exponents. I was told that a calculator wasn't allowed, because it was two expensive. I was told that when I needed to do a calculation that needed exponents, I should write a computer program in basic.

So in order to save a lousy $100 on a calculator, I was supposed to wait around until a computer terminal was free, and then write a computer program which would be at least ten lines long, instead of just pulling my calculator out of my desk drawer and punching a few buttons into a calculator. I was at that time earning about $30,000 per year. My job was to do calculations, and virtually every one of them required exponents.

Actually, it was amazing that the ever hired me, during my interview, I learned that they hadn't finished implementing a computer program to correspond with an IRS tax rule that had gone into effect three years prior. I blurted out something like,"What's the problem, at my current employer got it done in six months, and I did most of it on my own!"

It was crazy! I wasn't supposed to give the computer programmers the information they needed to write out programs. Instead, I was supposed to make them guess at what we needed, and tell them if they were wrong. All because we didn't want to be responsible if something was wrong. I said that it was much more likely to be done correctly, if we provided them with information. My boss considered that as a "novel approach."

By the time I was fired, I had ulcers, and was so depressed that I was told by unemployment to apply for Social Security Disability (which I am still on.)

I think it is good overview of personality types, but I prefer Personality Type by Lenore Thompson for adults and The Developing Child by Elizabeth Murphy for children. I also really like the MBTI manual by Isabel Briggs Meyers.

Can anyone reccomend a good general psychology book on children and teens. I am not looking for one that focues on abnormal psychology, but normal behaviors.

Also does anyone know a good overview of the Neurodevelopmental aspect of psychology, and its testing.

I've picked up a copy of the Keirsey book and started to read it a bit. It's interesting but I found a copy of Do What You Are that was useful too.

For childhood development, most of my books are packed up and the one that comes to mind is Strong Mothers, Strong Sons - it was helpful to me when my son was younger.

Also - I really liked reading the book on multiple intelligences, Multiple Intelligence by Howard Gardner.

I have an antique book on Motherhood that my mom gave me. It is an enormous tome and has a lot of really silly advice in it...when I get back home next weekend I will pull it out and give you a taste of it. The book is from the 1930's.

My son would say that the best book on child psychology is The Complete Calvin and Hobbes!! But he is an INFP too!

Do you find the Gardner book too academic at all? Too theoretical? Or is it a more practical approach? Readable?

You know, I was exposed to the ideas through the school my son was attending, so it made sense to me. But it was a bit hard to take in even then. I think it is less practical. Does anyone know of a more recent and more readable book that addresses multiple intelligences?

I have to say, the concepts presented were worth the effort to me. They really make you think of things in a broader framework than the regular view of IQ.

Yes, I would suppose the tricky thing would be being in the right academic setting so that those specialities don't go unnoticed and unnurtured -- especially for those leanings that aren't traditionally recognized.... Your son must be in a great school, though, for the Gardner's intelligences to be addressed to the parents. I hope I am as lucky when the time comes!