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Book Box | The book club that cracked the personality code
A summer reading group discovers archetypes and the power of reading for relationships
Dear Reader,
All summer our Manali reading group has been reading about different archetypes – the artist, the athlete, the caregiver, the rebel, the fashionista.
And then it is time to meet. This time, we are at the house of the civil servant, sitting in her garden. She brings us trays full of crisps, salsa and yoghurt dip. There’s chilled beer, apple juice and shandy, all laid out on a table at the edge of the lawn.
We plunge into the book of the month. "Is your child an Athlete or an Artist? How many of your friends are Caregivers and how many are Rebels?... Observe the archetypes operating in the people you encounter”, says Caroline Myss in Archetypes.
“Let’s do it! Let's guess each other’s archetypes and our own archetype too” someone says.
From my backpack, I produce pens and sheets of paper and hand them around. Everyone has to write down what they think are the archetypes of the people in the group. The wildlife conservationist objects, saying she joined the group too recently and doesn’t know anything about anybody, but then agrees to guess anyway.
As for the rest of us, we are not so sure we know each other that well. After all, we meet only every few months and talk mostly about books. But as we go around our circle, I am stunned at how accurately people are able to guess each other's archetypes.
The Wall Street-banker-turned-photographer is a rebel and an artist, we all guess that. The first book she had us read was A Step Away from Paradise, the story of a Tibetan Lama’s journey with 300 followers to a remote Himalayan mountain at the Nepal-Sikkim border, in order to ‘open the way’ to a hidden land of plenty found on no map.
"Tell me what you read and I’ll tell you who you are", says the old dictum. This summer afternoon in the mountains, sitting under the cherry trees, the truth of this is once again brought home to me. We guess correctly that our Wall Street banker-turned-photographer is a Spiritual Seeker.
The yogini is a rebel and spiritual seeker as well. But she is also a Caregiver, she tells us. This archetype became so overwhelming for her that it threatened to drown out all the other parts. She decided to run, to find a place far from everywhere in the mountains. And that is what got her here. We sit silent for a moment, absorbing her story. And thinking back to our chapter on the Caregiver — “Caregivers are haunted by a deep-seated belief that any act of self-care is the height of selfishness. Because you are naturally compelled to reach out to others, you habitually put your own concerns last. You can get so caught up in helping that you ignore your own hunger or exhaustion,” says Myss.
As for the civil servant, she travelled abroad to study and came back to work for the government in this mountain state, marrying a man she fell in love with, constructing roads and building schools and colleges. She is an advocate, a caregiver and in the way she takes leadership — a Queen.
The afternoon sun is filtering through the trees by the time we finish our round of the circle. We sit in silence for a few moments, moved by the enormity of the authentic conversation our book on archetypes has sparked. We’ve been meeting for four years now, but this afternoon, we’ve learned things about each other we never knew. We feel closer and more bound together, more compelled to look out for each other.
Thank you Caroline Myss, for your book on archetypes. And yes, we have some peeves with your classifications — some archetypes like the 'Wounded Child' are unexplained, and others like the 'Fashionista' feel extraneous. Other studies of personality types like the Myers-Briggs or the Enneagram include more nuanced. Your YouTube conversations on the archetypes have a different system of classification which makes it confusing - like the 'Rebel' is referred to as 'Outlaw'. But despite these niggles, thank you for getting us to understand ourselves and each other so much better.
What about you dear Reader — what is your archetype — a rebel, a creator, an everyman, a seeker? You will find a set of options in Caroline Myss’s book Archetypes and a larger set in the denser classic version of personality types in The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious by Carl Jung. Or dip into the fun versions of personalities by Linda Goodman in her Star Signs.
If you’d like to read about applying archetypes to the world of business, check out The Hero and the Outlaw: Building Extraordinary Brands Through the Power of Archetypes. And if you’d like broader books on human nature, How to Know a Person by David Brooks and The Laws of Human Nature by Robert Greene are great to go to.
And until next week, happy reading!
Sonya Dutta Choudhury is a Mumbai-based journalist and the founder of Sonya’s Book Box, a bespoke book service. Each week, she brings you specially curated books to give you an immersive understanding of people and places. If you have any reading recommendations or suggestions, write to her at sonyasbookbox@gmail.com
The views expressed are personal
Books referred to in this edition of Book Box
Archetypes by Caroline Myss
A Step away from Paradise by Thomas K Shor
The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious by Carl Jung
Star Signs by Linda Goodman
The Hero and the Outlaw: Building Extraordinary Brands Through the Power of Archetypes by Margaret Mark
How to Know a Person by David Brooks
The Laws of Human Nature by Robert Greene.
