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Personality

Some of us are aligned with one particular Spirit: those are called Strong personalities. Those of us aligned with the too-dependent Tephros or the too-independent Lithos are called Weak personalities. Others of us are aligned with a pair of Spirits, one of each gender: those are called Balanced personalities, while those aligned with two male Spirits or two Females are called Unbalanced personalities. Some of us are aligned with three Spirits and called Odd personalities. But most of us are aligned with one of each pair of Spirits; that is , with one of the sixteen Tables; they are called Even personalities. When faced with a choice between two opposing Spirits, Even personalities tend to side with the one who belongs to their Table, but not always.

The sixteen Even personality types in Irisophy correspond to the sixteen personality types in Keirsey typology (which is based on Myers-Briggs typology), but the functions and preferences don't correspond directly - for instance, the Myers-Briggs Extraversion versus Introversion axis doesn't correspond to any one of the four pairs of Irisophy spirits; the correspondance is more subtle. In effect, Myers-Briggs talks about the underlying world view that causes behavior, and Irisophy talks about the result: the behavior itself.

Here's how to find your Table if you know your Keirsey or Myers-Briggs personality type. (If not, search the web for any of the many tests available.)

Spirit	Color	Keirsey	Myers-Briggs
Eryth	Red	Observing	Sensory S
Cyan	Cyan	Imagining	Intuitive N
Chlor	Green	Scheduling	Judging J
Porphyr	Magenta	Probing	Perceiving P
Ion	Blue	Tough-minded	Thinking T
Xanth	Yellow	Friendly	Feeling F
Leuc	White	Expressive	Extraverted E
Melan	Black	Reserved	Introverted I

So for example, if you are a Keirsey Mastermind (M-B INTJ), your table is Thalassos, which unites Cyan, Chlor, Ion and Melan.

Meanwhile, the nine Strong personality types correspond to the nine personality types in Enneagram typology, and the twelve Balanced personality types correspond to the twelve signs of western Astrology.

Psychology

All the qualities of the Spirits are positives: nobody thinks Hope or Truth are bad things. One of the interesting aspects of Irisophy is that it forces you to confront the fact that Hope and Truth, for example, are opposites, so that more of one always involves less of the other. So each of the two can also be described in negative terms as the absence of the opposing positive: Hope as Deception and Madness, and Truth as Despair and Cynicism. The same is true of the other pairs: Tolerance versus Justice, Duty versus Passion, Order versus Change.

In the 1930s, a psychologist named Abraham Maslow developed a "Hierarchy of Needs" to describe one's present goals along a one-dimensional axis. To caricature his work, if one can't breathe, nothing else matters, but if one is breathing, one stops thinking about it and worries about getting enough water, then enough food, then shelter, etc. all the way up to the poor schlemiel who already has an Olympic Gold Medal and a Nobel Prize but has never earned an Oscar.

In a more-dimensional world, everybody who already has enough air, water, food, shelter, etc. is trying to be Good, that is, to embody all eight of the positives. Of course, that's not possible, although most people - the even personalities described above - balance the two poles of each axis. But at any given moment, maintaining that balance obliges us to strive to move closer to one of the eight poles, and while we're so doing, that quality becomes for us more important than the others: it's our goal. If, at that moment, we are asked what we consider the most important quality in others, that's the quality we'll name. Ironically, the people we seek to associate with - those we judge Best - are those who embody the quality we most lack!

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