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I am Ravenna Helson, retired now but a research psychologist at the UC Berkeley Institute for Personality Assessment and Research (IPAR) over the period covered by Merve Emre in this book. While her writing is engaging, Emre is interesting at the cost of accuracy. This begins with the title of her book, which suggests the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) was the first personality test and thus brought about the beginning of personality testing. This is far from true. To wit: the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory has been widely used and thoroughly researched; it was a clinical diagnostic instrument developed in the 1930s. The California Psychological Inventory has scales assessing characteristics common across cultures; it was developed in the 1950s. Another respected trait inventory was the Personality Research Form developed in the 1960s. The first manual for the MBTI was published by Isabel Myers in l962. So personality as a subject for research had long been born by the time the MBTI appeared. The history of Myers-Briggs may have been called “strange” by Emre because it was that of a mother and daughter who were not psychologists. Their story, however, shows so much dedication and commitment that “strange” seems, at best, an unkind term. But Emre often describes people in negative terms. Don McKinnon, director of IPAR, had had a consultation with Jung that deeply impressed him, and on the back of that association he greatly helped Myers and Briggs in the process of developing their test. He had the MBTI administered to the creative samples studied at IPAR, as well as to the staff, so we could see how the test was working. But Emre doesn’t mention MacKinnon’s help and further quotes me as calling him “henpecked” and “stingy,” terms that I don’t just refute on their face personally but am sure no one who knew Don would associate with him. Emre does not mention that Harrison Gough, a long-term director of IPAR (described by her, ludicrously, as “a compulsive designer of pen and pencil questionnaires”) and Avril Thorne, a talented graduate student, wrote “Portraits of Type, An MBTI Research Compendium.” This work was described by the Journal of Personality and Individual Differences as “certainly the most thorough, meaningful and valuable discussion of the MBTI, and anyone thinking of using it would certainly be required to be familiar with the work here presented (1999).” Furthermore, she describes the Mills Study of Women’s Adult Development, a seminal longitudinal study that I began, as “not finding out much.” Not true! It is one of the major longitudinal studies undertaken over a fifty-year period, and numerous studies credit it as such. More personally, Emre describes me as “not being known by IPAR staff members” and as being referred to as “the woman.” This statement utterly mystifies me, as I loved IPAR and greatly admired the staff. Over a very long relationship, including numerous social gatherings involving our respective families, I have no doubt the feeling was reciprocated. Equally objectionably, she says that MacKinnon gave me money for maternity leave, which is again not true. What is the case is that he enabled me to receive my usual pay even though I had gone to Europe with my husband on his sabbatical. Instead of ‘giving me money for maternity leave,’ he went out on a limb in an era less than sympathetic to family issues as they affected female academics, because he knew I wouldn’t disappoint him. Emre is a professor of English at Oxford, and she is ingenious at getting material that she can make relevant to her own direction. But her casual attitude toward the truth and her unkindness detract from the quality of her work.