At uni today we had a careers advisor come in and give us undergrads. all a lecture about volunteering, gaining work experience and finding the right career for you. (This replaced what would have been a morning working in the lab) The main focus of the advice? Finding out what career would be best for you by taking some Jungian psyc. test to pin down your personality type and then basing your ambitions off that.
Our prof. told us that if she had taken this test earlier then maybe she wouldn't have "wasted" as much time and found the right career quicker. You might be wondering what she wasted this time on? Well apparently she considers getting a Marine Biology degree a waste and doing research on cancer while working for a Biotech company a waste as well. All because of the Jung test.
You think that would be bad enough but no! We actually have to do this Jungian test and write a "reflective piece on it for our portfolio of work (This is supposed to be for a Biology degree!)
As you can tell, I'm sceptical of Jungian psychology. The personality type test to me seems like nothing deeper than cold reading and I can't see how the careers it suggests for you at the end are any more of a profound analysis of one's mind than google working out what videos to suggest to you on Youtube.
So my question is: Is Jungian psychology of any scientific merit? Or is it, as I suspect, pseudoscience?
[Thanks for reading through my rant! :) ]
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Yep, surely quasi/pseudo-science. The career advice she received looks to have been pretty useless--although it did give her a job of sorts.
We were also told that lots of businesses use these types of tests on potential employees - which is somewhat disturbing.
I don't know specifically about Jungian psychology, but I would say that a personality or aptitude test could be very useful for deciding your future career.
People tend to enjoy doing what they are good at, so if you are good at fixing things, mechanic is probably a better choice than car salesman. If you enjoy being creative and relating to people, maybe marketing is the career for you.
While researching cancer cures is a worthy goal, maybe a person who gets more fulfillment and satisfaction by imparting knowledge to the next generation should be teaching instead.
Another consideration is that a lot of people don't know what career they want, even after they have completed a college degree in something. There are also lots of jobs and careers that people don't consider because they don't know about them.
The test you talk about could be useful to widen peoples' horizons, but at best it would be a suggestion.
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