The Myers-Briggs assumes that who we are is consistent from one situation to another.

Implying that you aren't consistent in one situation to another? I am me, no matter what situation I may be. I act like myself. Situation agnostic. How you see me on here (besides my deeply personal ramblings) is generally how you'll see me in any other situation. A bit more outspoken, but that's due to the nature of being able to type my thoughts, rather than say them.

I fail to see how people can be inconsistent in who they are.

The problem, as Paul points out, is that Myers and her mother did not actually understand Jung at all. Jung didn’t believe that types were easily identifiable, and he didn’t believe that people could be permanently slotted into one category or another. “Every individual is an exception to the rule,” he wrote; to “stick labels on people at first sight,” in his view, was “nothing but a childish parlor game.”

My opinion is actually similar. MBTI by itself is fairly pointless and arbitrary, as the article points out. In my other post (which I assume you are talking about) I kind of quickly posted without thinking much, and posted a mixed view of MBTI combined with Jung's type functions. It was very unresearched, and I simply wanted to reach out and see what Hubski user's thoughts on Jung, Personality Typing, and MBTI in general were.

The article goes on to describe some sort of picture describing test. Which I find to be ultimately pointless. I've done a rorschach test before and my answers consisted of "ink blot, ink blot, ink blot, ink blot". I'd imagine describing a picture would go the same way "there is X in the picture. There is y in the picture." Making up stuff that isn't apparent in a picture isn't my cup of tea. And even if I did come up with a story (for the sake of the assignment) It'd have no representation of my personality or how I think, since I could come up with two drastically different stories with no overlap.

The rest of the article goes on to discuss the potential of forcing someone to play a role they don't know, understand, and aren't familiar with and then seeing how they act.

I'm not a big fan of the "let them do creativity activity X and observe what they do" approach. It's too open ended. It relies too much on the observer making coherent descriptions and thus one person may be typed differently depending on who is observing. That's just retarded. That's not personality, that's subjective appearance.

With MBTI, yes, it does do a bit of pigeon holing. And yes, it's a bit confusing with a few conflicting models (socionics is slightly different than MBTI which is slightly different than Jung). But what it doesn't do is require other people to assess someone's personality.

How the hell can you "know" someone's personality by a quick observation? Most of my personality doesn't even show up until I know you for over a year. The rest trickles out slowly. And I'm pretty sure to get to know me completely would take a life time. MBTI allows me to quickly explain quite a bit about myself: how I think, how I relate to people, how I spend my time, what I think about, how I view the world around me, what's important to me, etc.

MBTI works because it's a self assessment. You don't need a test. You don't need to role-play. You just be you, and you pick the MBTI type that's the closest to you. It's a logical system that allows people to understand each other.

And honestly, I've met more people that think/act like me in the past couple days of checking out MBTI than I have using any other personality testing (or just winging things). And MBTI also ends up explaining why that is. Amazing, isn't it? Hell, MBTI even predicted this little "outburst" I'm having.

What does that damn picture test tell me? Fucking nothing, since I pulled the stories out of my ass. It tells me as much about myself as looking at dreams does. Or doing an ink blot test. Those things don't tell me anything about myself or anyone else.

And hell, MBTI states that I'm into practicality, and you can bet your ass I am.

I sure as hell have my complaints about MBTI and the whole culture surrounding it (mistyping, people not understanding the system, too much conflicting info, etc). But the shit at least works if you stick with what Jung thought.

Edit: just to prove how stupid that picture test / story thing is:

Story 1: The boy was holding onto a rope. He was climbing down the mountain.

Story 2: The boy was holding onto a rope. He was hanging for dear life.

Story 3: The boy was holding onto a rope. He was climbing up the mountain.

What's that tell you? That I'm goal oriented? That I don't really want to climb the mountain? That I'm in a tough place? No. That I know how to write stories? Possibly. I just pulled all three out of my ass, and they don't represent me at all. What does MBTI say? That I'd probably love all three situations getting a thrill out of it. And MBTI is the one that's correct. Sounds exciting. Dangerous, but exciting.