I know who I am. I’m not looking for anything or anyone to define me. So why am I such a complete sucker for personality tests: the MMPI, Rorschach blots, Cosmopolitan’s “Hot Lover Quiz”? Recently, someone sent me a Web link to a particularly in-depth Jungian personality questionnaire. Naturally, I forwarded it to three people I respect and love, thinking we’d all take it and then share our results. As is common with these types of tests, after you’ve been “diagnosed” and “labeled,” they offer you a wide sampling of your fellow personality types. I looked at my friends’ results, clicked on their like-minded types, and was impressed to see what company they kept—all brainiacs and world leaders like Einstein, Mark Twain, Harriet Tubman, and Beethoven, for crap’s sake. When I clicked on my type, the first celebrities to pop up as my “personality matches” were John Goodman, Ice-T, Wilt Chamberlain, and Madonna. Suddenly, I felt a little fluffy. None of my “personality twins” had won a Pulitzer or written a great book. Their likenesses do not appear on currency. They were sitcom actors, nymphomaniacs, and one semi-successful cop hater from the late eighties. By contrast, the matches for one friend were so obscure that I couldn’t identify any of them by photo, which seemed to make them all the more important. Oh, and did I mention that each personality type had a cute archetypal name, e.g. “The Peacemaker,” “The Caregiver,” “The Explorer”? Then I saw mine. “The Diva.” Ouch. For the love of Celine Dion’s nail technician, please tell me this is a mistake. My friends are Gandhi and I’m Patti LaBelle. So the lesson here is that my self-perception is more than a little off. Maybe it’s time to embrace my inner pompous hack. I guess in my own deluded head, I will continue to think of myself as a sort of rockin’ Madeleine Albright. Truth be told, I would rather enjoy a cocktail with Lady Marmalade than, say, Golda Meir.
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