How do we identify what counts as the major personality traits?  There have been many attempts at establishing traits, including the Myers-Briggs typography, Goldberg's "Big Five," and Costa and McCrae's Five Factor Model.  Most personality theories suffer the same fault:  they attempt to construct a "value neutral" or "non-judgmental" value structure.  A person is not "bad" or "good" if he has one or the other personality; a personality is merely an "orientation" of  the person.  All of these typologies are valuable; they tell us something useful about humans.  What they do not tell us is what counts about humans, what drives human to love or hate, and what we will ultimately make of ourselves.  A proper typology, however, is based precisely on those behaviors  which are most valuative, which most repel or attract us to other people.  What we are after here are those behavioral traits which most enrage us or which most endear us.   We shall find that it is that set of values which we derive from these behaviors connects us best with our most important acts and beliefs, and most deeply with our biological inheritance.

Willie Sutton Robbed, they say, robbed banks because that's where the money was.  Well, not really.  He robbed banks because he  LOVED robbing banks.  The money, he said, was just "the chips." And that's where the "money" was.  Try to see personality the same way.  Why do we love or hate, fight or flee, kill or create?  The money is in our values - in the area of personality we ignore the most.

Previous

Next