Typology Testing & Yung's Four Temperaments - Brian M Logan

If you want to scratch a little deeper than normal to really find out what makes someone tick, folks with an HR bent often suggest you put the person in question through some Jungian Typology testing. This is a form of human metrics devised by Carl Gustav Jung which divides people into ‘Four Temperaments’. These being: Rationals, Idealists, Artisans and Guardians. I took one of these tests recently and discovered that I am an ‘Artisan’. Or more specifically, an ISFP or ‘Composer Artisan’ (each temperament has sub categories). So if you’re thinking about hiring me and want to get a handle on what sort of person you’d be working with…here’s some high falutin’ nonsense that apparently describes me:

The Portrait of the ‘Composer Artisan’ – (ISFP)

Besides being concrete in speech and utilitarian in getting what they want, the Composer Artisans are accommodating and attentive in their social roles. Composers are just as reluctant to direct others’ behaviour as are Performers, though they appear even more so, since they are more attentive.

While all the Artisans are artistic in nature, Composers (perhaps ten per cent of the population) seem to excel in the “fine arts,” having not only a natural grace of movement, but also an innate sense of what fits and what doesn’t fit in artistic compositions. Of course, composing must not be thought of as only writing music, but as bringing into harmonious form any aspect of the world of the five senses. And so, when a gifted painter, writer, sculptor, choreographer, film maker, chef, decorator, or fashion designer shows up, he or she is likely to be a Composer Artisan.

Composers, like the other Artisans, have a special talent for “tactical” variation, and such talent differs radically from that possessed by Idealists, Rationals, and Guardians (who have their own unique and inherent abilities). As the word “tactical” implies, Artisans keep closely in “touch” with the physical world, their senses keenly tuned to reality. But, while the Crafter is attuned to the tool and its uses, the Composer is attuned to sensory variation in colour, line, texture, aroma, flavour, tone-seeing, touching, smelling, tasting, and hearing in harmony. This extreme concreteness and sensuality seems to come naturally to the Composers, as if embedded “in the warp and woof” of their make.

Famous ‘Composer Artisans’ include: Bob Dylan, Jackie Kennedy Onassis, Cher, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Mel Brooks, Steven Spielberg and Neil Simon.