The Shadows of Type

Book excerpt: Psychological type systems such as the Myers-Briggs® are incredibly useful in helping people to improve their self-awareness and awareness of others. However the current models do not explain how well somebody uses their type, why two people of the same type can differ greatly in their effectiveness, or how we can maximise the potential of our type? The ‘Shadows of Type’ model provides the answers to these questions by placing psychological type back into its original Jungian context, ‘upgrading’ this to set it within the psychosynthesis model, and then combining it with ego development theory. This leads to detailed descriptions of the 16 psychological types through seven levels of ego development. Using the suggested coaching techniques and applications, individuals can gain more insight into how they are using their type and the traps that they can fall into, and coaches are enabled to work with psychological type developmentally, transformationally and transpersonally.