How long does it take to read Please Understand Me?
Please Understand Me by David Keirsey takes about 3 hours 51 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.
About 3 hours 51 minutes
A weekend read
First published 1978. 210 pages, about 57,750 words.
8 days at 30 minutes a day
Estimate based on 275 words per page.
At other speeds
| Slow, 150 words a minute | 6 hours 25 minutes |
| Average, 250 words a minute | 3 hours 51 minutes |
| Fast, 400 words a minute | 2 hours 24 minutes |
The page count is the median across 5 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.
About the book
After presenting a brief rundown of 20th-century psychology movements, Keirsey and Bates encourage you to take the 70-question "Keirsey Temperament Sorter," a sort of mini-Myers-Briggs test that places you in 1 of 16 personality types. Like the Myers-Briggs system, this test sorts your personality into groups of extraversion/introversion (E/I), sensation/intuition (S/N), thinking/feeling (T/F), and perceiving/judging (P/J). Unlike the Myers-Briggs system, Please Understand Me also presents four easy-to-remember temperament types -- Dionysian (freedom first), Epimethean (wants to be useful), Promethean (desires power), and Apollonian (searches for self) -- that underlie the 16 possible personalities identified by the test. The book then delves into a detailed analysis of each type, with sections on mates, children, and leaders. An appendix paints portraits of the 16 possible personality types.
Subjects: Temperament, Typology (Psychology), Interpersonal Relations, Character, Psychotherapy, Social interaction
