Beside Ourselves

by Naomi L. Quenk

Illuminates the hidden side of personality revealed in out of character responses. how these illuminate personality. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0891060626
• ISBN13: 9780891060628
• Release Date: January 1993
• Publisher: Davies-Black Publishing
• Length: 304 Pages
• Weight: 1.04 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Bridging the Gap

This book is super! Here, Naomi Quenk bridges the gap between Jung's psychology of the shadow, "Keirsey's" temperament, and MBTI.While not for the novice (some of the themes are contextually difficult to understand the first read through), this book offers startling insight into how MBTI and Jungian psychology play into our own (and others) personality makeup.The focus is, of course, what happens to us when we are at our worst - when we are "beside ourselves". That is, when our least developed aspect of personality comes out full force - much like an 8 year olds temper tantrum.While one would expect to see remarkable similarities between people "in the grip" of their least experienced emotional state, Naomi Quenk gives us both insightful, scientiic, and experincial data to show that personalities express their least developed parts in vastly dissimilar ways.This is yet another book which I believe shoud be "required reading" for anyone looking to get a better view of personality, temperament, MBTI, and character. Of course I will always refer people to Keirsey's work for the basic principles, along with "Games personalities play" (authors name escapes me). All of these offer a very good view of how the interactions of personalities play out in everyday life.Naomi Quenk's book is superb. In the appendix, she offers selected quotations by Jung (on which a preponderance of her work is based it seems). This book is well worth your money! I thouroughly enjoyed it.-Regards

One of the best I've read on the subject

This book is a great intro to how your life can be undermined by not being aware of your inferior function. Quenk is a master at presenting each of the eight functions and how we can lose control of these functions if we don't know exactly how our inferior function can take control when we're stressed, tired, irritated, etc. I've read a couple of books on personality type but I don't think I really understood the eight functions until this book. By going back to the basics (using Jung's typology instead of Keirsey's temperament theory), Quenk is able to see farther than most authors I've read. I also liked Quenk's discussion of the auxilliary function, which I'm slowly learning might be the most helpful function in becoming a complete person. With the information in this book, I feel like I can empathize so much more with other types than I could before. This is especially useful for an INTJ like myself who can have problems attending to people's feelings. I recommend this book and another excellent book: Lenore Thomson's Personality Type: An Owner's Manual.

Fascinating Reading

This was an excellent, excellent book about the underpinnings of type and in particular, the inferior function. In addition to the excellent descriptions about what each type is likely to do when "in the grip" of the inferior function, I thoroughly enjoyed the sections that described each type's development in mid-life. I'd recommend this book to anyone familiar with type who wants to get a better depth of understanding.

Breathtaking information, deepened my understanding of MBTI.

WOW! New information! I am an avidly interested lay person who, since discovering Myers-Briggs through other popular books on the subject. has used MB informally and superficially for years in day-to-day personal and work settings. But MB had never even crossed my mind as relevant or helpful on really bad days when I or those near me were stressed to the point of being "beside themselves". But this book explains that people feeling, speaking and acting out of character during different kinds (depending on their Type, of course!) of stress can be understood and predicted just as successfully as their preferences, feelings and reactions on a normal, less stressful day can be understood and predicted. The beauty of the inferior function analysis really has to be read to be appreciated. If you are interested in Myers-Briggs, you owe it to yourself to read this book. For me, it was the eye opener of the year! (So far.) Granted, I love Myers-Briggs, but my jaw has not closed since I picked up the book. I am an ISFJ, by the way, living with an ESFP. Thank you, Naomi L. Quenk, for writing this book and thereby lifting the tent canvas up to offer us lay folk a deeper appreciation of the broad applicability and plain old day to day helpfulness of Myers-Briggs personality type theory.

Best book I've read on type and the shadow function

For decades I had been searching for a book on how the shadow function operates during stress or job burnout. This book explains this function clearly. I highly recommend this book. Here I am, a senior citizen, INFP, looking for one great book on how the inferior function handles thinking, particularly, how my INFP shadow function, inferior extraverted thinking, actually operates under stress or job burnout, and this books explains what I want to know, and does the same for the other 16 types. It's a book I will keep on my shelf and comes in handy when I write plays or novels as well to get a handle on my characters and how they interact. I write books on how to write fiction according to one's type, and this book certainly opens doors for me to explore as I select the dialogue for my characters. The Hart Family