Please Understand Me: Character and Temperament Types is a psychology

Psychology

Psychology is the study of the mind and behavior. Its immediate goal is to understand individuals and groups by both establishing general principles and researching specific cases. For many, the ultimate goal of psychology is to benefit society...

 book written by David Keirsey

David Keirsey

David West Keirsey , is an internationally renowned psychologist, a professor emeritus at California State University, Fullerton, and the author of several books...

 and Marilyn Bates which focuses on the classification and categorization of personality

Personality type

Personality type refers to the psychological classification of different types of individuals. Personality types are sometimes distinguished from personality traits, with the latter embodying a smaller grouping of behavioral tendencies. Types are sometimes said to involve qualitative differences...

 types. The book contains a self-assessed personality questionnaire, known as the Keirsey Temperament Sorter

Keirsey Temperament Sorter

The Keirsey Temperament Sorter is a self-assessed personality questionnaire designed to help people better understand themselves and others. It was first introduced in the book Please Understand Me...

, which links human behaviourial patterns to four temperaments and sixteen character types. Once the reader's personality type has been ascertained, there are detailed profiles which describe the characteristics of that type.

Based upon the notion that peoples' values differ fundamentally from one another, Keirsey drew upon the views of several psychologists or psychiatrists: Ernst Kretschmer

Ernst Kretschmer

Ernst Kretschmer Prof. Dr. med. Dr. phil. h.c., was a German psychiatrist who researched the human constitution and established a typology...

 Erich Adickes

Erich Adickes

Erich Adickes - German philosopher who wrote many important works on Immanuel Kant and the Kantian philosophy. Adickes was a critical empiricist ....

, Alfred Adler

Alfred Adler

Alfred Adler was an Austrian medical doctor, psychotherapist, and founder of the school of individual psychology. In collaboration with Sigmund Freud and a small group of Freud's colleagues, Adler was among the co-founders of the psychoanalytic movement as a core member of the Vienna...

, Carl Jung

Carl Jung

Carl Gustav Jung was a Swiss psychiatrist and the founder of Analytical Psychology. Jung is considered the first modern psychiatrist to view the human psyche as "by nature religious" and make it the focus of exploration. Jung is one of the best known researchers in the field of dream analysis and...

 and Isabel Myers who are all mentioned as predecessors in the psychology of temperament or personality.