Your perspective has merit and you make some excellent points. And certainly the way some practitioners deploy the mbti does resemble astrology. The first time my husband took the mbti was during an organizational change. The company hired a consultant to transition employees, and everyone took the "test." Afterwards, my husband received a bad xerox of a personality type description in the mail, and had a brief conversation with the practitioner who basically "rubber-stamped" his result. Surprisingly, this irritated him so much that he went on to learn more about it, and eventually became a practitioner himself. And what he (and I) have learned through the years is that there are (as usual) good practices and bad practices. A bad practice was just described, which feels alienating and even violative. Good practices look very different -- and are extremely difficult to practice! Many individuals get sidetracked is by looking intensely at the mbti and questioning its validity. That's a red herring. We already know the instrument is observing "straws in the wind" and taking a wild guess at what someone's preferences are. The questions aren't really "scientific," and frankly it's a little clunky in this era of Mars Rovers and iPhones. The most it can do is open the door to a conversation about healthy differences among people. And here's where it gets interesting. If you think the mbti is the whole point, you've missed the point. The mbti is merely a frontrunner for the work of C.G. Jung's "Psychological Types." So the instrument may be flawed, but the theory it's based on is brilliant. As Jungian Joseph Henderson observed, the theory is possibly perfect, and we humans are dreadfully flawed in our understanding and applications of it. Accordingly, I don't care if you find flaws in the mbti; I'm interested in the theory behind it. For that conversation, there are three things you must be aware of before I can discourse intelligently with you: 1. Understand that the mbti's dichotomies are an arbitrary creation by Isabel Briggs-Myers. However, the true premise of psychological types are the eight functions of consciousness described by C.G. Jung. Those are the true essentials of his model, and if you confuse them, you've altogether missed the boat. (Very few people know this.) 2. Type was never intended to categorize people -- it was intended to categorize consciousness. Big difference! (How many categories of *consciousness* are you familiar with?) When you try to solve a math problem, you are in a Thinking consciousness. When you propose to your partner, you are in a Feeling consciousness. It is not good to confuse the two (and some people do!). 3. Type is a moral problem. Someone who prefers Thinking will feel that those who prefer Feeling are *immoral*. These are not learned beliefs; they are innate in the individual. And with this point, I have turned the discussion toward an exploration of "shadow" -- one of Jung's most important concepts. In this way, type opens up the conversation into Jung's entire work: the Collective Unconscious, complexes, archetypes -- the whole enchilada. So if you think type is nothing more than the dichotomies of the mbti and a silly parlor game like astrology, you have frankly missed the point. And I feel a little sorry for you, because this conversation can be SOOO much richer. I'm currently enrolled in a Masters/PhD program at Pacifica Graduate Institute to deepen my own learning around type. I started as an ordinary mbti practitioner in 1996; I have achieved Master Practitioner (the highest level). However, I rarely administer the mbti -- instead, I take my clients through a *structured* type discovery process supplemented by coaching that helps them learn Jung's work and truly get to know themselves. I don't employ any assessment for this work, because most of my clients have been MIS-typed by the Indicator or by a free online test. So why bother? Accordingly, I can appreciate your criticism of the mbti…. AND I'm disappointed that you haven't learned more about the theory that informs it. That's a topic my INTJ husband and I will *never* tire of.