Egogram vs. MBTI — What Is the Next Step From “What Kind of Person Am I?” to “Why Am I Like This?”

Have you ever found yourself more curious, not less, after learning your four MBTI letters? Saying “It’s because I’m an INFP” puts your mind at ease for a moment, but a few days later the same question comes back. Why can I never refuse a request? Why am I always driving myself? You know the type, but the “why” that keeps repeating inside that type is still there. The tool made to answer that “why” is the egogram.

The egogram is a tool devised in 1972 by John Dusay, a Transactional Analysis (TA) theorist. It is a personality profile that shows, like a bar graph, how one person’s mental energy is divided and flows among five ego states: Controlling Parent (CP), Nurturing Parent (NP), Adult (A), Free Child (FC) and Adapted Child (AC). In one sentence: if MBTI tells you “what type of person you are,” the egogram shows “where your energy is crowded right now, and where it is empty.” A type is a name tag. An energy distribution is a map.

What MBTI does well — giving language to the person called “me”

First we want to say this plainly. MBTI is not a wrong test, and it is not a fad to be thrown away. This tool, which Katharine Briggs and Isabel Myers refined on the basis of Carl Jung’s theory of psychological types, gave a great many people “a language that describes me” for the first time. There are people who were only able to forgive themselves after learning the word introvert: “So I’m not short on sociability. I’m a person who recharges from within.” That is by no means a small thing.

The language of MBTI is a language of identity. It lets you say, “This is the kind of person I am,” and it lets you see a person different from you as “a different type,” not “a person who is wrong.” Few tools have been used so widely to reduce misunderstanding in relationships and to open the first door to self-understanding. So instead of rejecting MBTI, we want to ask this. Once you have opened that door and gone in, what is there?

What the egogram does well — answering “why” and “can it change?”

MBTI classifies you as one of sixteen types. The egogram does not classify. It holds that everyone has all of the same five ego states, and that only the allocation of energy among them differs from person to person. It does not say, “You are this type.” It says, “The caring part of you rises high, but the part of you that enjoys freely is pressed down low.” If types are rooms divided by walls, an energy distribution is closer to terrain with water flowing over it.

This difference in viewpoint makes three practical differences.

• The possibility of change: An MBTI type is generally read as an “inborn preference,” so it would be odd for an INFP to strain to become an ESTJ. The energy distribution of the egogram, on the other hand, can be shifted by practice. Dusay explained this with the constancy hypothesis: the total energy of the mind is constant, so when you practice growing a low ego state, an ego state that is too high comes down naturally.
• An explanation of “why”: Transactional Analysis, the root of the egogram, sees your present energy distribution as the result of adaptations you learned in childhood in order to survive. A person with a high Adapted Child (AC) is not “a timid type by nature.” They are a person for whom, at some point, adapting was the safest path. A name tag stops at “That’s how it is.” A map takes you as far as “No wonder it was that way.”
• Me in relationships: MBTI draws the preferences of one person, me. Transactional Analysis was born in the first place as a theory for analyzing the words and feelings that pass between people (transactions). The five columns of the egogram are also a list of “which position I speak to the other person from.”

One thing applies to both tests. Neither MBTI nor the egogram is a medical diagnosis. The two tools are safest and most useful when you use them not as a standard that passes judgment on you, but as a mirror in which to see yourself.

The same person, two lenses — a comparison in paragraphs

Instead of setting them side by side in a table, let us look at one person through the two lenses in turn. Suppose there is someone who cannot refuse requests and is always worn out. Through the MBTI lens, this person will probably be explained by the F (Feeling) type’s pursuit of harmony. “You are a type that values people’s feelings, so you tend to avoid conflict.” That is true, and it is comforting. But the explanation stops here. The type is like that, so that is how it is.

Look at the same person through the egogram lens and the picture changes. The bars for Adapted Child (AC) and Nurturing Parent (NP) are very likely to rise high, and the bar for Free Child (FC) to sit low. And Transactional Analysis asks: since when has looking out for others first been as natural to you as breathing? Follow that question, and you come to a resolution made in the days of childhood, when refusing was dangerous. It is what Eric Berne called the life script: the unconscious plan that I wrote as a child in order to survive. The script’s greatest power is that it cannot be seen. The egogram stands that unseen allocation up in front of you as five bars. The moment it can be seen, it is no longer a fate that controls you. It becomes something you can look at.

The grammar of change is different too. In the language of MBTI, change is close to “accepting my type and making the most of my strengths.” In the language of the egogram, change is “watering the low bar.” For a person whose Free Child is low, an hour of playing with no purpose is the prescription. For a person whose Adult (A) is low, the prescription is the habit of writing down one line of facts before deciding. Not a defect to be fixed, but a muscle to be built — this is the attitude the egogram takes toward change.

How to use the two tests together — don’t throw one away, use them in sequence

So our suggestion is not “Throw away MBTI and do the egogram.” It is to use them in sequence. MBTI is the compass that finds your continent on the wide map. The egogram is the contour map that shows in which valley of that continent your energy is pooled right now. Here is how to use them together.

First, treat your MBTI type as a “starting question.” Do not stop at “I am an INFJ.” Ask, “Under the name INFJ, what pattern do I keep repeating?” Even among INFJs, an INFJ with a high Adapted Child and an INFJ with a high Controlling Parent live completely different days. The type may be the same, but the terrain of the energy is different, and so is the point where it gets hard.

Second, take the egogram again after some time has passed. It is normal for an MBTI type not to change much, but the egogram moves like the seasons. After a change of job, after a breakup, at some turn on the road of recovery, the height of the bars changes. Seeing that change is itself what builds the sense that “I am not a fixed being.”

Third, use the egogram as the language of your relationships. “We don’t fit, because we’re a T and an F” closes the conversation. “I just spoke from the Controlling Parent position. Let me say it again from the Adult position” opens it. You cannot change a type, but you can change the position you speak from, even at this very moment.

Today, check the terrain of your energy

If MBTI has already given you the language of “What kind of person am I?”, you are ready to go on to the next question. Where are my five mental energies crowded right now, and where are they thirsty? Which bar has protected me, and which bar has been pressed down for a long time?

The free egogram test on Lifescript takes a few minutes of answers and shows you a graph of the energy distribution of your five ego states. Next to the four letters of your test result, this time set five bars side by side. The moment the map of “Why am I like this, and where can I start to change?” is placed next to the name tag of “What kind of person am I?” — self-understanding takes one step forward, from explanation to recovery.