These systems are descriptive, not explanatory. With astrology, you provide birth information and your destiny is described for you but not explained to you. With a system like Jungian typology, you take a self-report quiz (the Myers-Briggs) and the results drop you into one or another of sixteen descriptive categories. You announce that you are introspective and you are dropped into a category that includes introspection. By virtue of this dropping, and not because of any explanations, you become a "type."

This is exactly the same process that permits clinicians to drop you into a "mental disorder" category. You make self-reports and those self-reports are matched against certain descriptive criteria and you are handed a label. Nothing is explained; there isn't the slightest attempt at explanation. In the first case you become an INTJ or some other type, in the second case you become "depressed" or "attention deficit disordered," and in both cases the transaction is completed.

This is not the way to understand original personality, whatever that may mean, or mental disorders, whatever they may mean. Taking self-reports and doing nothing more than looking up what pre-made, inexplicable categories those self-reports fit into is only a naming game. As we rethink psychology, we will want to think about ways that we can understand original personality better than that.  

Unfortunately, if you wanted to wrest the idea of original personality away from mere categorizing systems and into the scientific arena, you would find yourself at a standstill and a complete loss. How can we possibly know if there is such a thing as original personality as a general concept or what it might actually be in the case of any given individual? Can you dream up a single test, experiment, or idea?

I can think of no tests to give, no experiments to devise or run, and no conceivable way of knowing if this infant who pops out of the womb is already Jane with a worldview, a temperament, and a personality, all produced or influenced by genetics, in utero experiences, and the exact size, shape and quality of her brain, or whether she is genuinely unfixed and pliable and could, by virtue of her circumstances and her experiences, become any Jane under the sun.

If she could become any Jane under the sun, it would seem to follow that she would have no sense of being a "wrong" Jane; that is, no sense that she was born one Jane and was supposed to be one Jane and has somehow become the wrong Jane. If, however, she was a certain Jane at birth and she somehow had access to her sense of that self, then it would follow that if she deviated from that "path" she would know it and have a sense of not being the Jane that she was supposed to be. But could we trust such reports? I can't see how we could trust such self-reports, perhaps with some exceptions that I'll chat about next time.

There is something poignant and suggestive about Jane wondering about such things, just as it is poignant and suggestive that an adopted Jane might wonder about her birth parents and "who she really is." This poignancy, however, prevents us from thinking clearly about what is really important to us, namely the extent to which we can become the person we would like to be. It is the gap between "who we now are" and "who we want to be" that should demand our attention, rather than "who we were at birth." And yet ...

And yet "who we now are" must somehow be related to our original personality, if there is such a thing, but unfortunately in completely unfathomable ways. It therefore probably pays to let go of any fascination with original personality except perhaps in a handful of regards, say with regard to sexual orientation and in a few other areas, and focus instead on how we intend to make meaning and align our life with our principles and our values. That effort brings us back into the stark, vibrant present where the project of our life can be enacted.     

The best test for original personality, or any test for that matter, has not been devised yet or even conceptualized. I suspect that it can't be and that all attempts will smell off. Probably we will have to let go of the idea that it matters who we were born as, whether an astrological "Virgo," a Jungian "INTJ," an Enneagram "loyalist," or some other "type" in some other "system."

Probably it is more important that we form strong current intentions, including intentions inscrutably rooted to our original personality, and then struggle to follow through on those intentions. That is the essence of making meaning and braver work than taking a self-report test and discovering that, lo-and-behold, you are exactly the person you described yourself to be.

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Eric Maisel, Ph.D., is a psychotherapist, bestselling author of 40 books, and widely regarded as America's foremost creativity coach. His latest book is Rethinking Depression: How to Shed Mental Health Labels and Create Personal Meaning (New World Library, February, 2012). He is the founder of noimetic psychology, the new psychology of meaning. Please visit Dr. Maisel at http://www.ericmaisel.com or contact him at ericmaisel@hotmail.com. You can learn more about noimetic psychology at http://www.entheosacademy.com/courses/7