The Personality Brokers: The Strange History of Myers-Briggs and the Birth of Personality Testing

The Personality Brokers is a masterful piece of intellectual history that reads like a character study. I was absolutely gripped by the bizarre saga of the Briggs family and their persistence in bringing this indicator to the world. Emre’s wit is sharp. She never talks down to the reader, even when describing the more eccentric aspects of her subjects' lives. The chapter on the house-party testing with celebrities like Truman Capote was particularly brilliant. It perfectly illustrates the mid-century obsession with categorization. This book is for anyone who enjoys seeing how ideas take root in culture. It is beautifully researched and written with a narrative flair that is rare in non-fiction. Even if you hate the MBTI, you have to respect the hustle of the women who created it. An amazing and illuminating read that stayed with me long after I finished it.

Wow, I had no idea the origins of the Myers-Briggs were so strange and almost cultish. Merve Emre has a gift for making history feel urgent and alive. The way she weaves together Jungian theory, corporate greed, and the personal ambitions of Katharine and Isabel is just spectacular. I loved the wittiness of the prose; it’s sharp without being mean-spirited. The book really makes you think about why we are so desperate to be put into boxes. It’s a fascinating look at the 'technology of the self.' Even though the science behind the test is basically non-existent, the story of its creation is a classic American tale of reinvention. I finished it in three days and have been telling everyone about it. Essential reading for anyone who has ever felt defined by a four-letter code.

As someone who grew up obsessed with my INTJ label, I went into this expecting a total takedown. Instead, I found a deeply researched and incredibly sharp history of how the MBTI came to be. Merve Emre is a fantastic writer. She manages to make the strange, almost cultish origins of the test feel both bizarre and inevitable. The corporate history, especially the part about how it was used to manage the post-war white-collar workforce, was eye-opening. To be fair, it’s less about the 'science' of personality and more about the people who sold us on the idea. I did find the middle chapters about the creators' domestic lives a bit long-winded. However, the prose is so elegant that it kept me moving through the slower parts. If you want a book to tell you more about your 'type,' this isn't it. If you want to know how we all became obsessed with these four letters, it's a must-read.

Finally got around to reading this, and the historical context of the MBTI as a capitalist tool is fascinating. It is amazing how a test created by two 'housewives' managed to infiltrate the military, churches, and top-tier corporations. Emre does a great job showing the darker side of this, including the classist and racist views held by the creators. My favorite part was the description of the 're-education' camp the author had to attend to get certified. It really highlights the cult-like nature of the modern MBTI community. My only real gripe is that the book wanders into some very detailed tangents about side characters that don't always feel relevant. Still, the core narrative is strong. It’s a worthwhile read for anyone interested in how we construct our identities in a corporate world. Well-written and very informative throughout.

After hearing about the controversy surrounding this book, I had to see for myself. It’s definitely well-researched, though it leans heavily into the 'character' aspect of the creators. Emre doesn't pull any punches regarding the lack of scientific validity, which I appreciated. Personally, I enjoyed the deep dive into the 1940s corporate culture and how they used these tests to screen for 'ideal' employees. It does suffer slightly from 'character capture,' where the personal lives of the women overshadow the broader implications of the test itself. But the writing is so good that I didn't mind too much. It’s a fascinating, middlebrow intellectual history that is both entertaining and slightly disturbing. It makes you realize how much of our modern world is built on very shaky foundations. Definitely worth your time if you like history with a side of skepticism.

Ever wonder where that four-letter code on your LinkedIn profile actually came from? This book provides the answer, though it takes a very academic route to get there. It’s part biography and part social critique, tracing the mother-daughter duo behind the world’s most famous personality test. The truth is, the history is quite strange. Katharine Briggs had a quasi-religious obsession with Carl Jung that feels more like a fever dream than psychology. The writing is good, but it’s definitely not a quick read. At times, the tone feels a bit condescending toward people who actually find value in the test. I would have liked more data and less 'humanist' philosophical maundering. It’s a decent piece of history, but it feels like it’s missing a core argument. It sits in a weird middle ground between being a biography and a scientific critique without fully committing to either.

Picked this up because I’ve taken the MBTI at every job I’ve ever had. It’s a solid, if somewhat dry, history of the test's evolution. The author is clearly a talented researcher, and the details about the Education Training Service’s role were new to me. However, the book feels a bit disjointed. It jumps from being a biography to a corporate history to a personal memoir. Not gonna lie, I skipped a few of the more academic chapters in the middle. The truth is, it’s more of a history book than a personality assessment. It won't help you understand yourself better, but it will help you understand why your HR department is obsessed with you being an ENFP. It’s an okay read, but it could have used a much tighter edit to keep the momentum going.

This was such a disappointment after that killer introduction. The author starts with this fascinating story about spending $2,000 just to access the MBTI archives, which set the stage for a real investigative thriller. But then the book just devolves into a dry, overlong biography of Katharine Briggs and Isabel Myers. Look, their lives just aren't that interesting. I wanted to understand the modern industry behind personality testing. Instead, I got endless details about their house chores and what they ate. Emre dismisses the question of whether the test actually works as something for 'scientists' to worry about. Frankly, that feels like a cop-out. I finished the book knowing very little about the actual validity of the MBTI and way too much about the mundane habits of two 20th-century housewives. It’s basically an overgrown New Yorker article that loses its way.

Not what I expected based on the marketing. I thought this was going to be an exposé on the multi-million dollar personality testing industry. Instead, it’s mostly a domestic history of two women who had no formal training in psychology. The author promises a lot of drama in the intro, claiming the test cost these women their marriages, but the actual text doesn't back that up. It seems like their husbands were just slightly annoyed. Personally, I found the writing style a bit too dense for the subject matter. There’s a lot of middlebrow intellectual gloss—references to Foucault and Adorno—that doesn't really add much to the story. I also hated the weird hypothetical section at the end where the author imagines lives for different 'types.' It felt like filler in a book that was already dragging. Just didn't hit the mark for me.

What a slog. I wanted a book about personality psychology, not an over-the-top, boring biography of two women I don’t care about. The writing is incredibly academic and slow. The author even admits in interviews that she doesn't care about the validity of the test because she's a 'humanist.' That is exactly the problem with this book. If you're going to write about a psychological indicator, you need to talk about the data. Instead, we get pages of description about what these women wore. It’s frustratingly vague where it should be clinical. I learned more about the flaws of the MBTI from a five-minute Google search than I did from this entire 300-page book. If you want to actually learn about personality testing, go elsewhere. This is just an over-inflated biography that misses the most interesting questions about the subject.