Showing posts with label Merve Emre. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Merve Emre. Show all posts

Wednesday, September 19, 2018

The Personality Brokers by Merve Emre

The Personality Brokers by Merve EmreI requested this book from NetGalley not only because of my interest in the Myers-Briggs but also the title. "The Personality Brokers" conjured up for me the image of two women making their livelihood from the  personalities of others. Sort of vampiric. And Emre sort of sets Katherine up that way, feeding off the life of her daughter, becoming incredibly entangled.
This was an interesting look at the women behind the still-popular personality tests. Emre sometimes feels like she veers into historical fiction more than nonfiction and, while she tried to seem impartial, sometimes she seems a bit contemptuous of Katherine. And that could be somewhat my reading as Katherine was definitely a strange figure, especially seen through the lens of today's restrictions on psychology/psychiatry.
It was a bit hard to plow through this book in places but it seemed well-researched and I did finish. The most astonishing to me was the absolute lack of scientific testing involved in this test that so many people use.

Three stars
This book came out September 11
ARC kindly provided by NetGalley