David Keirsey was a psychologist and counselor who spent years working with troubled children and their families before turning his attention to personality typology, and Please Understand Me, co-written with Marilyn Bates and first published in 1978, is the book that introduced the Keirsey Temperament Sorter to a mass audience. Rather than simply repackaging the sixteen Myers-Briggs types, Keirsey grouped them into four broader temperaments, Artisan, Guardian, Idealist, and Rational, explicitly reviving an idea with roots going back to Hippocrates' four humors, the ancient theory that people's core dispositions sort into a small number of recognizable, stable patterns. The book includes a full self-scoring questionnaire, letting readers sort themselves into a type without needing a licensed practitioner, which was a significant part of why it became a fixture on office bookshelves and in relationship counseling for decades after its release.
Reviving an Ancient Four-Temperament Framework
Keirsey's core intellectual move was connecting modern Myers-Briggs typing back to a much older lineage, the four-temperament theory traceable to Hippocrates and later Galen, arguing that the sixteen MBTI types cluster naturally into four broader groups that map surprisingly well onto categories humans have been describing informally for over two thousand years.
The Four Temperaments: Artisan, Guardian, Idealist, Rational
The book organizes its material around four core temperaments: Artisans, drawn to action, spontaneity, and tangible results; Guardians, oriented around duty, stability, and responsibility; Idealists, focused on identity, authenticity, and personal growth; and Rationals, driven by competence, systems-thinking, and understanding how things work, with each temperament further split into four subtypes corresponding to specific MBTI letter combinations.
The Self-Scoring Questionnaire
Unlike a typology text meant only to be read and understood abstractly, Please Understand Me includes a full questionnaire readers can score themselves, without a licensed administrator or paid assessment, which is a major reason it spread so widely outside clinical and corporate settings where formal MBTI testing usually required a certified practitioner.
Applying Temperament to Relationships and Parenting
A significant portion of the book applies the temperament framework specifically to romantic relationships and parent-child dynamics, arguing that much relational friction comes not from incompatibility but from partners or parents and children of different temperaments misreading each other's core motivations through their own temperament's lens.
How This Differs From Official Myers-Briggs Materials
Keirsey was not affiliated with the Myers-Briggs organization and developed his temperament sorter independently, drawing on Carl Jung's original typology and Hippocrates' four temperaments rather than the specific research tradition behind the official MBTI instrument, which means some psychologists treat the two frameworks as related but distinct rather than interchangeable.
Career and Workplace Applications
Beyond relationships, the book devotes real space to how each temperament tends to approach work, what kind of roles and environments suit an Artisan versus a Guardian versus a Rational, material that made the book a common recommendation in career counseling and corporate team-building contexts throughout the 1980s and 1990s.
The Later Revision: Please Understand Me II
Keirsey substantially revised and expanded the material in 1998's Please Understand Me II, refining some of the temperament descriptions and subtypes, which means readers picking up a copy today should check which edition they're getting, since the original and the revision differ in meaningful ways.
Pros and Cons
Pros:
- The self-scoring questionnaire lets readers type themselves without a paid practitioner or formal MBTI administration
- The four-temperament grouping gives a simpler, more memorable entry point than navigating sixteen MBTI types directly
- Connecting the framework to Hippocrates' ancient four temperaments gives it an interesting historical grounding
- Practical relationship and parenting applications go well beyond abstract personality description
- Became a genuinely useful shared vocabulary for millions of readers navigating workplace and family dynamics
Cons:
- Not affiliated with or validated by the official Myers-Briggs organization, so the two frameworks aren't strictly interchangeable
- Modern personality psychology, particularly the Big Five model, treats trait-based typing with more academic skepticism
- Readers should confirm whether they're getting the original 1978 edition or the substantially revised 1998 Please Understand Me II
Frequently Asked Questions
Is this the same as an official Myers-Briggs assessment?
No, Keirsey developed his temperament sorter independently, drawing on Carl Jung's typology and Hippocrates' ancient four temperaments rather than the specific research tradition behind the official MBTI instrument, so the two frameworks are related but not identical.
What are the four temperaments the book describes?
Artisan, drawn to action and tangible results; Guardian, oriented around duty and stability; Idealist, focused on authenticity and personal growth; and Rational, driven by competence and systems-thinking, each further divided into four subtypes.
Should I read the original 1978 edition or Please Understand Me II?
Keirsey substantially revised the material in 1998's Please Understand Me II, refining the temperament descriptions and subtypes, so most readers today are better served by the revised edition unless they specifically want the original text.
Is the four-temperament framework scientifically validated?
It draws on a genuinely ancient lineage going back to Hippocrates, but modern personality psychology, particularly Big Five research, treats fixed-type frameworks like this one with more academic caution than trait-dimension models.
Final Verdict
Please Understand Me earned its lasting popularity by doing something official Myers-Briggs materials rarely offered readers directly: a genuinely accessible self-scoring questionnaire and a four-temperament framework simple enough to remember and apply the same day you take it. It's not a substitute for rigorous academic personality psychology, and readers should track down the revised Please Understand Me II rather than the original for the more refined version of the material, but as a practical, shared vocabulary for understanding relationship and workplace friction, it remains genuinely useful decades after its first printing.
Rating: 4.6/10