[Congressional Record Volume 147, Number 109 (Tuesday, July 31, 2001)]
[House]
[Page H4967]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                     TRIBUTE TO ISABEL BRIGGS MYERS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from New York (Mr. Boehlert) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. BOEHLERT. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to talk about an interesting 
conference that will soon take place in my congressional district. On 
September 20 and 22, 2001, Hartwick College in Oneonta, New York, is 
sponsoring a symposium in honor of a truly remarkable woman: Isabel 
Briggs Myers. Isabel Briggs Myers devoted more than half her lifetime 
to the observation, study, and measurement of personality and gave us 
the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, the most widely used personality 
instrument in the world.
  The story of Isabel Myers and the Type Indicator is unique in the 
history of psychology and shows how much a single individual can 
achieve in the face of formidable obstacles. The story begins with 
Isabel's mother, Katharine Cook Briggs, a thinker, a reader, and a 
quiet observer who became intrigued with the similarities and 
differences in human personality. Katharine Cook Briggs became 
interested in the work of a Swiss psychologist named Carl Jung. She 
passed that interest on to her daughter, Isabel.
  Isabel Briggs, after being home schooled except for a year in public 
school, entered Swarthmore College at age 17 and graduated first in her 
class in 1919. At the end of her junior year, she married Clarence 
Myers. Until the outbreak of World War II, she functioned as a mother 
and homemaker although she found time to publish two successful mystery 
novels.
  The outbreak of World War II stirred her desire to contribute to the 
national effort. With the departure of much of the male workforce into 
the armed services and the emergence of many women new to the 
industrial workplace to fill their jobs, she saw a place where she 
could help. She was convinced that an understanding for human 
personality differences could help a person find a successful and 
rewarding kind of job and avoid unnecessary stress and conflict. Having 
long since absorbed her mother's admiration of Jungian typology, she 
determined to devise a method of making the theory of practical use. 
Thus was born the idea of the Type Indicator.
  With no formal training in psychology, with no academic sponsorship 
or research grants, Isabel Myers began the painstaking task of 
developing a set of questions that would tap the attitudes, feelings, 
perceptions, and behaviors of the different psychological types as she 
and her mother had come to understand them. A habitual reader, she 
haunted libraries and taught herself what she needed to know of 
statistics and test construction. She persuaded countless school 
principals in eastern Pennsylvania to allow her to test their students, 
and she spent many a long evening scoring questions and tabulating 
data.
  Isabel Myers Briggs spent decades working to perfect the Myers-Briggs 
Type Indicator. At the age of 82, she was still at work on a revised 
manual for the indicator, long after she was profoundly weakened by her 
final illness. Today, the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator has been 
translated into over 30 languages and is used by career counselors, 
colleges and universities, the Department of Defense, and numerous 
corporations.
  On September 22, 2001, Hartwick College will confer, posthumously, an 
honorary doctorate degree to Isabel Briggs Myers. It is well deserved.
  Mr. Speaker, in closing, I would like to bid the symposium attendees 
and Isabel's family my best wishes for the success of their event; and 
I applaud their desire to honor such an able scholar and true 
visionary: Isabel Briggs Myers.

                          ____________________