This is something I forgot to respond to in my earlier reply. When I first started therapy, one thing I hoped for was better understanding of others. I had become aware that people have different values, perceptions, etc., and (naively) assumed that a therapist would have expert knowledge of individual differences and would use that knowledge in their work and would help me learn some of it. I also anticipated that I might understand myself better.

Unfortunately, therapy did not help me in either of these ways. (In fact, with therapist #3, I put considerable energy into trying to understand her, and in trying to help her understand me, but with little success in the former, and no apparent success in the latter.

But I did find some help with both of these a few years after my initial attempts at therapy, when, in my reading to try to help me, I came across the Meyers-Briggs-Jung personality types. So I suggest that to anyone else who is seeking to understand others and/or themselves. The best source I found was Type Talk by Kroeger and Thuesen.

I do have some reservations about this typology, though -- at least, about how some people use (to my mind, misuse) it. Although Kroeger and Thuesen do not seem to do this much, the subtitle of their book ("The 16 personality types that determine how we live, love, and work") does suggest this misuse, by using the word "determine". I don't see the types as determining so much as influencing. Indeed, Kroeger and Thuesen call the types preferences, and emphasize that they are just that, not rigid limitations. Unfortunately, I have encountered people who said things like, "You are this type, so you need ...", not taking into account the wide variability of people within each type. I hope nobody in this forum will do that! It's both unkind and inaccurate.