A few "real" personality tests; MB, 16PF, DISC

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In preparation for my upcoming series of "diagnosis" appointments, the shrink is requesting pertinent past psychological testing so I pulled three personality tests out of my big dusty "mental stuff" file. These were professionally administered at various times in the last ten years by my employer and graduate school.

I thought I would briefly look over the results and contemplate how they may relate to Autism.

First, the most common: Meyers-Briggs. There have been many threads about this. I am INFJ, concisely defined as "Introverted Intuition with Extraverted Feeling".

Generally the canned description applies to me with one funny exception, "[INFJs] find that they often empathically understand the feelings and motivations of others..."

It seems like the opposite of AS. Or is it?

The "Auties lack empathy" shtick is a dead horse often beaten by the ignorami. I find that I am deeply affected by the emotions of others, but I'm just not good at processing it. When somebody is crying, it upsets me, even if it has nothing to do with me. I feel powerless, and even panicked, because I have no clue how to deal with it. When somebody is angry, I feel personally attacked, even if I am just overhearing an argument between unrelated parties. My brain simply flashes "emotion! emotion! emotion!" and I get mad for the simple fact that the sound waves of anger travel to my ears and now I have to process it and deal with it.

My mom said that the thing with Autism and Autism spectrum disorders is that their are SO many variations of it, and that makes it harder for people to figure it out.

I don't have the empathy problem either myself,if anything I'm OVERLY empathetic, I'm always aware of feelings and feel bad when other's are hurting or if they have a problem I always want to help

Second, the 16PF. This test does not give a personality "code" or "type" but gives a series of dichotomous descriptors, both in a master list format and grouped according to subcategory. (For example, there is a left/right scale of 1-10 introversion to 1-10 extraversion. Gee, I wonder where I am?)

If you are rated 3 or 4, for example, in a descriptor, the results are within the average. If you are 9 or 10, however, those personality factors are considered "extreme".

My "extreme" master list descriptors (all 10) are introversion, abstract reasoning, vigilance, abstractedness, and self-reliance.

Like the prior test, the key word throughout is "creative". The results present an accurate description; a very unorthodox, cynical, loner with the savant-like ability to "think outside the box".

This highlights to the point that ones "communication" may seem simplistic, over-literal, and highly concrete, the actual "thinking" behind it is anything but. My struggle, and that of AS in general, is the transition between the internal and external worlds.

The third and least well known: DISC. This test emphasizes clearly what the prior ones have said. The official "Classical Profile Pattern" is, go figure, "Creative".

The numerical result is 7117, to an extreme degree in each category.
Dominance and Conscientiousness are very high. Influence and Steadiness are very low.

If one is offended or stigmatized by words like Autism, Asperger's and so forth, here are some more socially acceptable labels for my results:

Mad Scientist
Absent-minded Professor
Eccentric Artist
Evil Genius

Not always.
Of course it is not accurate for everyone.
No generalisation can be accurate for everyone.
But it is accurate for me.
Not all autistics lack empathy.

In 2006, I was stopped by a kindly security guard at the airport baggage collection area, who noticed that I was lost and totally vague about where I should be. Instead of suspecting me of hatching some heinous plot against the airline industry, he just asked me: "Would you describe your occupation as 'professor'? And would you say you were, um, a little 'absent-minded'?"

Gee, they can pick me out in a crowd.

Wow, one-A-N, that's never happened to me before. That's pretty funny from my perspective. People see me all different ways, depending on how I'm behaving, but mostly it's like Osaka from Azumanga Daioh -- clueless.

tenalpgnorw, check out the statistics section to see a sample of what everyone is, MB-wise and anything else. It's really neat!

Good luck with your testing.