I don't know that I ever will write anything worthy of being called a book, but this page will eventually be an explanation of various personality theory systems, and what I think of them. Intelligence is also a closely related topic and will be addressed. For now these are just a few links that provide general explanations. Please note that I'm not completely satisfied with any of these theories, in fact I'm doubtful whether any theory can ever fully describe even one person. Please send any comments ([email protected]) on how accurately these theories describe either yourself or people you know. In parenthesis I've included my own type. The main topics I'd planned for the "book" are as follows:

1) Hippocrates Four Humors (SM) - This theory began my interest in personality theories. When I was a kid I read a book, Personality Plus, that developed this theory a little bit. It is a very simplistic theory and I quickly realized that either the theory was wrong or my personality was invalid - I guess it's why I'm trying to find a "Grand Unified Personality Theory." In the book the four types - sanguine, melancholy, choleric and phlegmatic - are given definitions that amount to this: sanguine and melancholy (emotional group) tend to describe a person as either optimistic or pessimistic, and choleric and phlegmatic (behavior group) are used to express driven vs. relaxed characteristics. There are checklists to see what your dominant and secondary types are (if you have a secondary type), and you're supposed to end up with no more than one each from the emotional and behavior groups. At first my dominant was solidly sanguine, but when I revisited the checklist a few years later, my melancholy and sanguine traits were basically tied.. That's another thing, your personality supposedly is the same your entire life or else you have a psychological problem. Rather than accepting that I have a psychological problem, I decided to look for other theories. 

3) Modern Psychology's Big Five

4) Enneagram (5, but making full use of wings & connections) - This is my personal favorite (ergo the links).  I like it because there are so many options, and thus all descriptions are quite malleable. However, that may mean that it's barely a theory at all, that people can make it say whatever they want it to. Still, there is relatedness inherent in the geometry that seems to work out very well. Has many connections with New Age, but I am not promoting New Age. The enneagram shape has deep roots in ancient mysticism, but the personality theory is much newer and I really don't see it as having anything to do with mysticism either. Each site has a different way of describing the types, browse at your leisure:

5) Myers-Briggs (Is/nTJ) - This one gets used frequently in the business world by companies wanting to improve interpersonal relationships of their employees. I personally don't like it because it's so vague. However, it does have the unusual quality that it is widely used, and therefore provides alot of empirical data. How useful that data is is quite another question, but at least it's there. Some interesting proposals about the interconnectivity of MBTI and enneagram have been made, and that is another reason why I include it.

6) Learning Styles and personality theory in education 

7) Multiple Intelligences - Perhaps MI is just modern phrenology. But, if there are distinct and identifiable apportionments of intelligence, it might make this whole personality business easier.

8) Birth Order and personality theory in families (2/4, 1st girl)

9) I don't really know that I'll make this a section, but I recently discovered something new with JARGON.TXT, namely a description of hacker personality. I'm not actually a hacker - I'm using MS FrontPage to do this, my attempts to run Linux have been short lived, I'm not anywhere near fluent in any programming language, I dropped Java twice (though I think with good reason), I doubt I could build a useful circuit to save my life, and so on. Moreover, I often do things considered uncouth to hacker culture and in general behave like a newbie/wannabee (llama?). Still, I would consider myself a fairly devoted admirer of hacker culture, and perhaps one day - if I ever get around to learning to program - I'll actually deserve the title. I think hacker culture embodies some of the best traits of enneagram types 4,5, and 6. As a 5 I have the inherent 4 and 6 wings, and therefore hacker culture resounds deeply with me. I don't know, maybe I'm just projecting hacker traits onto myself...anyway, long live hackerdom!