Albert Frank

One could ask about the applicability of the Meyers-Briggs Scale to the HiQ Community.

Humans try to categorize, probably because it looks scientific.

It’s easy to categorize someone into a 4 letters category.

Nothing really new in the Meyers-Briggs.

In the characterology of Le Senne (René Le Senne, 1882 – 1954, French philosopher, Professor at La Sorbonne from 1929 to 1931 and from 1942 to 1952), there where three characteristics: emotive / cold; active / inactive; primary / secondary (I’m not sure about the English terms – in French: primaire / secondaire ); categorizing the human being into 8 classes. Some added introversion / extroversion, and now again 16 classes.

This seems to me brutal, without subtlety (of course, sub-category where added, giving a more scientific-looking aspect). Also the controversial Szondi theory leads to categories (in a much more subtle way).

First of all, I would suggest scales (1 to 5 or 1 to 7). Example: 1= totally extroverted 7= totally introverted.

Anyway, for very high IQ, Meyers-Briggs shows nearly nothing (very few differences).

About dimensions or specific statements that could be found among very high IQ subjects (and probably not – but who knows? – among others), I would suggest to try to check:

- The ability (or the reflex) to "think" with concepts (abstracts??) and not with words. I mean with that to try to check if someone first create for himself a clear "image" of something, with which he may think, and only after, if needed for communication, convert it into words.

- The ability for someone to conceive a problem, with *total* abstraction of himself.

- The reflex to create often associations: as example: you work on a definite subject. It push you to think also at something else which is, in a certain way, in association with the first subject. This can be direct or indirect. Example: "The temperature of the earth is in augmentation". Direct association: The minimum of Maunder: from 1645 to 1715, the temperature was going down. Indirect association: The solar tasks.

- The reflex of, automatically, when a problem arises, to look if there exist an uncommon way to try to solve it.