Bill. That kind of approach calls into question the traditional personality typologies- the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (Briggs Myers, 1998) or the Enneagram (Palmer, 1988). You seem to be saying that we have all of it within us (which was certainly what Jung originally asserted) (Jung, 1923). Part of your dance of coaching is to ask, in this moment, which of these do you wish to explore or to unfold?
Julio. I would say that those tests, instead of revealing what is so, only provide some judgment of what has been. I wouldn’t dismiss them because they can provide something valuable, but at the moment that you say you are type whatever and you are this sign and that’s it, I think we are doing a disservice to that person. If I make an assessment about the way that you are, there can be no learning and, therefore, no transformation.
Bill. So, another version of what you’re saying is that if we are assessing the experience- for example, that’s a Type 5 experience or that’s a clear sign of your introversion could have just limited the experience and essentially distanced people from it.
Julio. It can be a dangerous game. I’ve seen people destroyed by assessments made of them. As a matter of fact, I had a conversation with a man yesterday about how he was diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD). Now the psychiatrist has changed his mind. He said, no, it’s not ADD; it’s something else.
What do you mean something else? I have ADD. The man was living that as a way of being–like the same thing as his gender or the color of his eyes.
There are so many things in life that we assess, but we don’t call them assessments. We live assessments as if they were properties of ours. We create a lot of pain around that.
Bill. In Europe emphasis is often placed on a feminine epistemology. This perspective shows up in the United States in the work of Carol Gilligan (1982) and the Stone Center (Jordan et al., 1991), a notion that knowledge is contained within the context; that there’s a self within the context of who I am with you at this moment that is more than the enduring self.
The way I am being right now is not just defined by history. It is defined by your presence. What you allow me to be probably also means what you do not allow me to be.
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