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Abstract
Self-knowledge is seen by many religious traditions as a key to growth in wisdom and maturity. It is also a key practical goal of all attempted taxonomies of the human personality. A distinctive feature of the MBTI® psychological type approach is its affirmation of the intrinsic value of both polarities of the key preferences, for example extraversion and introversion. The absence of value judgement in MBTI® psychological type is personally affirming, but could encourage complacency and narcissism. However, each type preference logically entails a weakness in using its polar opposite, and therefore preferences are also limitations, biases that cause and perpetuate blind spots and incapacities. Accepting this can lead individuals to recognise those situations in life where their type preferences are no guide or basis for behaviour and to work on their less preferred attitudes and functions. Thus self-knowledge can generate the self-control that biblical writers see as integral to wisdom and maturity.
Acknowledgments
I thank Professor Leslie J. Francis for introducing me to the previous literature on the psychological correlates of religious maturity, and for his helpful evaluation of an early version of the present paper. Its substance was presented at the 2011 Biennial Conference of the Association for Psychological Type international (APTi), San Francisco, on 11 August 2011, and I thank all those who attended and participated in the ensuing discussion.