Renee Baron - What Type Am I?: The Myers-Brigg Type Indication Made Easy

PENGUIN BOOKS

WHAT TYPE AM I?

Renee Baron is a writer, therapist, and public speaker. She is the coauthor of the best-selling books Are You My Type, Am I Yours? (Harper, 1995), The Enneagram Made Easy (Harper, 1994), and The Four Temperaments (St. Martins, 2004). She lives in Berkeley, California. Visit www.reneebaron.com.

What Type
Am I?

Discover Who You
Really Are

Illustrated by Miriam Fabbri

Renee Baron

PENGUIN BOOKS

PENGUIN BOOKS
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First published in Penguin Books 1998

30 29 28 27 26 25

Copyright Renee Baron, 1998
All rights reserved

MTBI, Myers-Briggs, Myers-Briggs Type Indicator and Introduction to Type are trademarks of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator Trust in The United States and other countries.

The inventory used in this book was written by the author based on her research of temperament and type in counseling and teaching. It is not a validated psychological assessment. If you wish to take the official Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), refer to the resources in the back of this book.

Grateful acknowledgment is made for permission to use Enneagram Types from The Enneagram Made Easy: Discover the Nine Types of People by Renee Baron and Elizabeth Wagele. By permission of HarperCollins Publishers.

Illustrations by Miriam Fabbri

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Baron, Renee.
What type am I?: discover who you really are/Renee Baron.
p. cm.
ISBN: 978-1-101-19951-0
1. Typology (Psychology) 2. Temperament. 3. Myers-Briggs Type
Indicator. I. Title.
BF698.3.B37 1998
155.264dc21 97-52023

Printed in the United States of America
Set in ITC Century Light
Designed by Kathryn Parise

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He who knows others is learned;
He who knows himself is wise.
L AO - TZU

In gratitude to my children Jodi, Tami Luna, and Dan,
and to my friends who nurture, support, and encourage
my spiritual and emotional growth.

And to Sadie,
whose wisdom and clarity amaze and delight me.

I wish to express my deep appreciation to the following people. Without their efforts, this book would not have come to fruition.

To Tami Luna Baron, my daughter, friend, and editor for her clarity, insightfulness, and humor. Her suggestions have benefited each chapter of this book. I am grateful that she has taken interest in my work throughout the years.

To Miriam Fabbri for expressing my words and humor so creatively with her illustrations. It was a delight working together.

To Amanita Rosenbush for her enthusiasm in this project. Her clear mind and professional expertise were of great help.

To Richard Hendrickson of Career Works for his invaluable additions in the last few months of writing. His knowledge of type added a great deal to this project. I am especially grateful that my Higher Power brought him to me when I needed help with the final phase.

To my private clients and the thousands of workshop participants over the years who have helped make the types come to life.

To David Keirsey and Marilyn Bates, the authors of Please Understand Me, the book that started me on my journey of personality type. And to all the other authors whose books added to my knowledge.

To Dr. Linda Berens of the Temperament Research Institute for reading over the manuscript and offering feedback. Her suggestions were especially valuable in correcting some of my temperament biases.

To Beth Kuper for her editing and fine tuning. To Susan Urquhart-Brown for her editing, feedback, and promptness. To my dear friend Ellen Odza for helping me tie all the loose ends together. To Caryn Gottfried and Joan OConnor for reading the entire manuscript, and to Eloise Mondfrans, Gary Pickler, Rich Byrne, and Naomi Friedman for reading individual chapters. To Rick Foster and Karen Keefer for phone interviews.

To Joyce Beckett for her helpful suggestions along the way and for adding to my knowledge of type in the beginning years of my studies.

To Susan Page for her counsel and encouragement throughout the years.

To Shelly Roth, my agent, for her support and professionalism.

To Jane von Mehren at Viking Penguin for her enthusiasm in the project and her excellent suggestions that gave the book more substance.

To Janet Hastings for listening each week to my ramblings, musings, anxieties, and joys.

My special thanks to Landry Wildwind for helping me to see the Truth and encouraging me to continue seeking my passion.

W hile I was growing up, every member of my family seemed so different from me. It felt as if I had been dropped into the wrong household. Wanting desperately to fit in, I tried very hard to please everyone and became pretty successful at it. Eventually I learned how to get my strokes, gain acceptance, and evoke approval. Unfortunately, I had to pay a high price for this. My natural self remained hidden, not just to the world, but to myself as well. As a consequence, I grew up without developing many of my innate talents and gifts. Since I had put so much effort into being who my family wanted me to be, I lost any clear sense of who I really was.

As a result I was keenly aware of the qualities and abilities I didnt have. I was always comparing myself to others and putting myself down in subtle, and not so subtle, ways. When people would acknowledge my natural strengths and abilities by saying, You have so many creative ideas, or, You are very perceptive, Id shrug it off because, like my parents, I didnt see these things as anything special.

After many years of therapy and an advanced degree in psychology, I discovered a book called Please Understand Me by David Keirsey and Marilyn Bates. It was about the Jungian personality types as seen through the lens of Keirseys temperament theory. Once I identified my own temperament and type, I was amazed because I recognized that it was so truly who I am. It gave me a strong sense of relief to finally identify my real Self. And then finding out that there were other people like me made me realize that I wasnt such a misfit after all.