Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #8978 in Books
• Published on: 1998-05
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 350 pages

Customer Reviews

Definately worth a read but there is life beyond Keirsey!
I read the book having stumblied across his website by complete accident. I became just as fascinated with it as must reviewers have. I shared it with people, I maintain its fully correct and was very well written.

So what now? Keirsey has supposedly told you all you need to know and chiped away at other theories in the process. I'd advise readers to be a bit bold and go ahead and read Jung, Myers etc irregardless.

While Keirsey deals in nouns and labels, Jung's work deals in adverbs and energies. I maintain they don't overlap as much as Keirsey claims.

A good reference book for human relations,
PLEASE UNDERSTAND ME II is based on the works of Myers, Briggs, and Jung. But David Keirsey believes that these founders of Typology were wrong to believe that the greatest difference between people is whether they are Introverts or Extraverts. Keirsey believes that the iNtuition ("thinking done without recourse to either logical or empirical investigation") preference versus the Sensing ("paying attention to what is going on outside oneself") preference is much more important. Therefore, Keirsey's personality test is different from the MBTI, although they have a 75% overlap (meaning, if you are an ENFP according to the MBTI test, then there is a 75% chance you will be an ENFP according to Keirsey).

As other reviewers have noted, David Keirsey has organized the 16 personality types into four more general categories of Temperament: the Idealists (NF), who are the identity seekers; the Artisans (SP), who are the thrill seekers; the Guardians (SJ), who long for security and want to instill traditional values in others; and the Rationals (NT), who want to find orderly ways of doing things and are inclined toward science. I find this classification to be very helpful; I agree with Keirsey that trying to remember 16 personality types is far too much. Four temperaments is easier. And in case you don't want to answer all 70 questions to find out your Personality Type, you can take the much shorter "Temperament Sorter" that Keirsey has developed.

PLEASE UNDERSTAND ME II has been of incredible help to me over the last two years in dealing with some *extremely* complicated inter-personal relations. It has literally helped save my sanity; this book is one of the staples of my life. But it is not a book I would recommend for cover-to-cover reading. I consider this a reference book, and I consult it on a weekly basis.

Andrew Parodi

A useful book
I use PUMII a lot in coaching, particularly when discussing relationships and the problems relating to them. It is a useful way of opening up a discussion about why "a" doesn't get on with "b", thinks they must come from different planets etc. For people who have never come across Myers Briggs before, the questionnaire is a useful assessment and the book provides a good level of detail if a coachee wants to explore further. For those personality types who want less words but still gain a good understanding of the different types, I also recommend Renee Baron's What Type Am I?