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In Jung's Typology in Perspective Angelo Spoto's main purpose is to help Jungian analysts and therapists appreciate the value and utility of the Myers-Briggs Type Inventory for clinical work and to show those who employ the MBTI in non-therapeutic contexts the necessity of including Jung's dynamic view of typology in their work. The author is a Jungian-oriented therapist who has for years used and taught the MBTI. (He was one of the two major speakers at the July, 1995, XI Biennial International Typology Conference.) Jungians need to be aware that Katharine Briggs, the originator of the MBTI, visited Jung in 1937 when he came to the US to deliver the Terry Lectures at Yale, and later Isabel Briggs Myers (Briggs's daughter) sent Jung the first version of the MBTI as well as some interpretations of early inventory results. On July 1, 1950 Jung responded that, although he had not worked with types for several years, ‘I should say that for any future development of the Type-Theory your Type-Inventory will prove to be of great help’.
If Jung could speak about the MBTI, Spoto suggests, he would be concerned about the excessive emphasis on types in terms of measurements and tables, and yet would acknowledge that the Apollonian archetype of order is legitimately at work in the popular appeal and use of typology. Many who employ the MBTI, caught up in what Spoto calls a ‘typological frenzy,’ do not bother with Jung's dynamic theory; conversely,