Origin

Because of its bi-dimensional analysis of both mental and physical giftedness, Brain Typing© is arguably the leading scientific approach in understanding normal human behavior.

Every healthy person (think “normal brain”) on Earth has one of 16 BTs, which is a genetically predisposed wiring that regulates both mental and motor (physical) skills--regardless of race or gender. 30+ years of research have lead us to conclude inborn BT plays an even greater role than one’s nurture (approx. 60/40) in the sum total of who we are. Whether at home, in the workplace, or on the field of play, BT can appreciably predict and qualify human behavior.

In discovering your particular Type, you may be interested to learn about famous (or infamous!) persons in the public eye who share your design. Persons such as Donald Trump (#15), Joe Biden (#13), Beyoncé (#9), Tom Brady (#9), LeBron James (#1), Tom Cruise (#11), Denzel Washington (#13), or Oprah Winfrey (#9). That aspect can be interesting, no doubt.

Not that it’s your goal, but the more you seek to emulate a person of your like BT, the more you really can become like them—relatively speaking. And, although it may be un-PC to say, persons of the other 15 BTs cannot equally attain to your area(s) of inborn giftedness.

At Beyond Personality, we are devoted to helping you better understand yourself and others. In discovering your God-given design, you’ll likely find answers to life-long questions you’ve had about your mental, emotional, physical, and even spiritual perspective and behavior.

The overall goal of BT is to promote and appreciate the genetically-driven similarities and differences in people. And, we aim to dispel traditional misconceptions by proving gender and racial equality with relation to specific areas of intelligence. (That's not to say that everyone is equally intelligent in all areas, which is manifestly untrue. But rather, BT reveals that gender and race are relatively non-determinant factors with regard to mental aptitude and proficiency.)

Jung-Myers Typology

When it comes to understanding the differences in people, without a doubt we owe a great deal to the work of Swiss psychiatrist and psychologist, Dr. Carl Gustav Jung. He is regarded as the founder of the modern theory of psychological type (or typology). It was Jung who said, “It was one of the greatest experiences of my life to discover how enormously different people’s psyches are.” Jung believed that specific patterns, types, or combinations of preferences in humans could be described and categorized. (Referring to Jung’s typology, only.)

In all, there are four pairs of preferences which he, and later, Isabel Myers, explained and developed. A preference, they concurred, is the conscious or unconscious choice an individual makes in a certain designated realm. These eight preferences are:

Extraversion (E) and Introversion (I)
Sensation (S) and iNtuition (N)
Thinking (T) and Feeling (F)
Judging (J) and Perceiving (P)

Each preference is paired with its opposite. Thus, an individual is considered to be either Extraverted or Introverted, Sensing or iNtuitive, Thinking or Feeling, and Judging or Perceiving. Every individual’s personality is represented by a combination of four preferences, expressed as a series of four letters. An ISFP, for example, is considered to be an individual who is an Introvert, Sensate, Feeler, and is Perceptive. In all, there are 16 different combinations of the preferences making up the different personality types, each with a unique description.

This preference analysis does not involve questions of good and bad. There are no superior or inferior personality types. Rather, Jung (and later Myers) pointed out major differences in people’s perspectives, providing substantial light on individual human behavior. It is interesting to note that while much of the personality research over this past century involved study of abnormal behavior (schizophrenia, mentally ill, etc.), Carl Jung’s discerning personality evaluations were based upon observing normal behavior in thousands of people over the course of his lifetime.

Niednagel & the BT Connection

In the same way, Brain Typing stems from a detailed evaluation of “normal behavior” of tens of thousands of people. In the 1970s, as founder Jonathan Niednagel became exposed to the world of personality or psychological types, he became frustrated by their connection to the abstract. Having a pragmatic mindset, himself, he felt compelled to take conceptual typology and make it more tangible. And, he sought to establish a biological basis for it.

In those days, Niednagel was troubled by what he considered ineffectual testing procedures. He found self-report tests (like the MBTI) were inherently flawed in objectively identifying the aforesaid traits in people. He believed people “tested out according to what they wanted to be, too often,” which in turn skewed the proper and consistent application of typology. And so he sought after a better and more accurate way.

As he continued to study people (especially youth, via his coaching of sports), through 1) empirical observation (of behavioral traits) and 2) advances in neuroscience and genetics (of personality-to-brain-area links in behavior), Niednagel concluded there were visually discernible (phenotypical) associations between the brain and body. He found that a person’s type (personality/brain) was demonstrable in two complementary ways, available to a keen observer:

Watching them move (athletically)
Conversing with them and giving attention to their diction, intonation, syntax, and eye/facial mannerisms. If handled carefully, Niednagel found that either method of investigation could then be used to reliably predict the missing pieces from the other half of the empirical formula. (e.g. If he/she speaks and reasons like a Sensing Feeler, they will also move (on a court or playing field) like other Sensing Feelers.)

Personality & Persona

What does “personality” mean to you? To most, it conveys the sum total of the mental, emotional, and social characteristics of a person. The term, however, originates from the Latin persona. It corresponds to the Greek word for face. Actors in ancient Greece could perform more than one role on stage by donning different personas or masks. And this is a picture of yesteryear’s psychology—the idea that our “personality” is who we are, primarily from nurture, and therefore changeable with the seasons.

Personality can and often does change, but it’s not the driving force of who we are. True and inborn type behavior is not the collection of faces we randomly choose to wear, but what lies beneath. And nurture is not the bigger part in forming who we are; but nature is. Niednagel and others (including neuroscientists and geneticists) believe our truest inborn identity is primarily driven by the orderly and systematic function of the brain, which controls our mental and even our motor skills (gross and fine).

Evaluating Brain Type

For most, generally noticing how the people around us speak, look, and move is not too difficult. However, if we were to go a step further and meticulously and painstakingly notice each mannerism and little idiosyncrasy of those same people, for most of us that would be an irritating and overwhelming task! Not so for persons like Jonathan Niednagel who are strongly wired in the inanimate left-posterior brain (Q4). Though he did not realize it at the time, he was innately designed for the task.

Only a person wired strongly in the left-posterior brain (home of “true introversion”), which is the conscious and methodical hemisphere (categorizes observations), having a mind fixated on what is (Sensing), ignoring distracting possibilities, and being more predisposed to logic (Inanimate/Thinking) could actually enjoy and endure this grueling venture over a number of decades.

JN & Mendel

Consider a similar story from the life of Gregor Mendel, who was a 19th century monk and amateur botanist. His work involved growing plants and carefully observing traits of heredity (phenotypic). Although his work was almost universally rejected at the time, after his death Mendel’s theories became valued and thereby widely accepted to the point that he is considered today by many to be the “father of modern genetics.”

M.D. and Ph.D. Nancy Andreasen highlighted the story of Mendel in her book, Brave New Brain: Conquering Mental Illness in the Era of the Genome:

“Human beings have observed for many years that normal and abnormal traits are transmitted within families e.g., eye color, hair color. The process by which much of this transmission occurs was formalized through the painstaking observations of Gregor Mendel. In the mid-1860s, he conducted meticulous experiments on plant life.”

Mendel’s observations, which we now refer to as classic Mendelian patterns of transmission, created the framework within which genes and genetic transmission are currently understood. Mendel did not know he was studying the effects of genes because the word gene had not yet been coined. He was observing traits or factors.

Conclusion

This Austrian monk was able to simply observe what happened to his pea plants based on experimental manipulation, and to deduce the principles of genetics though unaware that genes existed! All he could see were the variant traits among his plants. We can summarize Mendel’s observations and conclusions by using modern terminology. Mendel was observing the phenotype, but behind the phenotype was a genotype. Mendel could not see the genotype—only the phenotype. Nonetheless, he inferred the presence of something that must represent a genotype, since this was the most plausible explanation of the patterns of transmission that he was observing.

Similarly, Niednagel did not come to his conclusions (regarding the mind and body) easily. It was only after 30+ years of painstakingly observing individual human traits—cognitive, motor and spatial that he came to a dynamic understanding of what is at work.

Just as Mendel saw what is now known to be a phenotype, Niednagel inferred the presence of something that compellingly argued for a genotype. This was the most plausible explanation of the trait patterns he was observing in people. In the early 1980s, Niednagel deduced what is now called Brain Types (a.k.a. the presence of observable traits, neurologically-governed, that logically must represent a genotype).