A Woman's Guide to Personality Types: Enriching Your Family Relationships by Understanding the Four Temperaments [Paperback]

Donna Partow (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 2002

The First Personality Book Exclusively For Women

Why can you organize the church retreat at the drop of a hat, but never get your laundry done? What makes your husband clearn the garage and his car every week? Why doesn't your toddler play quietly for the entire morning like the neighbor's child does? What motivates your son to join all the clubs and teams known to the fourth grade? Or maybe you wonder why he doesn't do anything more exciting that watch TV?

If you ever ask yourself questions like these, here are the practical tools you need to understand yourself and your family. In her candid, entertaining style, bestselling author Donna Partow helps you identify your God-given personality type as well as those of your family members. Are you Powerful? Perfect? Popular? Peaceful? Armed with that knowledge, you'll be able to bring harmony to your relationships, understand how best to meet your husband's emotional needs, and be equipped to bring out the best in your children—without making yourself (or your loved ones) crazy.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"An excellent resource for moms who want to identify their God-given strengths and then use those skills for His glory." -- homebodies.org

About the Author

Donna Partow is a bestselling author and Christian communicator with a compelling testimony of God's transforming power, making her a popular guest on more than two hundred radio and TV shows, including Focus on the Family. She is also a regular speaker for women's groups and retreats.

Donna is no stranger to the tugs and pulls of life. Her books are born out of a need to evaluate and organize one's priorities, offering practical advice to her readers. She and her family live near Phoenix, Arizona.

Product Details

• Paperback: 280 pages
• Publisher: Bethany House Publishers (February 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0764225472
• ISBN-13: 978-0764225475
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.9 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.9 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,247,317 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

I'm a Christian author and motivational speaker on a mission to empower people to maximize their lives for maximum Kingdom impact.

I'm an obsessive compulsive. My obsession? The Kingdom. It's all about advancing the Kingdom. My consuming passion is motivating the church to get up out of the stinkin' pews and into the world. Honestly, I don't even care what you do. Just leave the building, people! Leave the building!

Just because He can, God has enabled me to write a bunch of bestselling Christian books that have sold almost a million copies on all seven continents. Yep, even made it to Antarctica. With titles like This Isn't the Life I Signed Up For, you can understand why I'm more popular with actual hurting people than the big-shots who run the show in Christiandom.

People ask how I landed in ministry. Here's how it went down. The angels were having a bad week and God knew they needed a good laugh. He spotted me living in a trailer off the New Jersey Turnpike and smiled from ear-to-ear. "Hey, everybody, watch this. I'm going to give this woman a worldwide ministry!" Rumor has it the angels laughed for a month. I'm on the planet for one reason: to demonstrate that God has absolutely no standards. He'll take anybody in. If you are willing to turn your life over to God, no matter what a mess you've made, he will astound a watching world with what he can do.

When people leave my conferences, I don't want them to say, "Wow, what a remarkable woman. I could never be like her." I want them to say, "If I had known the standards for being used in the Kingdom were that low, I would have signed up years ago."

I've done hundreds of radio and TV shows. I've spoken at the CIA Headquarters in Langley, Virgina twice. I've done three conferences on women's entrepreneurship for Senator John McCain (neat guy, lovely wife, btw).I've shared the platform with lots of Christian celebrities, but what I really love is ministering to the homeless, alcoholics, drug addicts and battered women alongside the Salvation Army and urban ministries around the world. Or sharing the gospel on crowded street corners in South America. I absolutely love, love, love the Middle East and have a ministry called Pieces4Peace which reaches into the largest Muslim city in the world.

Even though I fried my brain on cocaine, apparently enough cells survived to enable me to maintain a 4.0 at the University of Pennsylvania's School of Arts & Sciences and Wharton Business School. I hold a B.A. in English (with a very practical emphasis on 17th Century British literature) from Rutgers University.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Breezy and Humorous, January 27, 2005

By 

Lynellen Perry "lynellenDOTcom" (Dumfries, VA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: A Woman's Guide to Personality Types: Enriching Your Family Relationships by Understanding the Four Temperaments (Paperback)

Donna Partow aims this personality styles training book at women and says she writes for women in the bathroom. This means she tries to have short and useful segments that can be read in stolen moments. The introductory material contains an actual quickie personality test, and an explanation of the classic four-personality-type system. The back of the book has perforated quick-reference cards summarizing the strengths and weaknesses of each personality. Donna follows the practices of Florence and Fred Littauer and renames the personality types so that they all cutely start with the letter "P": Dominant/Choleric becomes Powerful; Influencing/Sanguine becomes Popular; Steady/Phlegmatic becomes Peaceful; and Conscientious/Melancholy becomes Perfect.

The first section of chapters is titled "Understand Yourself"; next is "Understand Your Man", "Understand Your Marriage", and finally "Personalities in Your Children". Inside each section, the four personality types are addressed in turn, enumerating the identifying characteristics, strengths and weaknesses of each.

I found it a bit confusing that Donna tried to separate the strengths and weaknesses of women versus men. For example, separating those of a Popular woman from those of a Popular man. Popular women are listed as having strengths of: talkative, life of the party, motivator, creative, and accepting. Popular men are listed as having strengths of: fires up the troops, great saleman, and great family motivator. Since they are nearly identical, the separation feels artificial and can seem to imply that popular women are not great salesmen or family motivators ... only men. And that just doesn't seem right. The popular man is listed as a poor money manager; but isn't the woman just as prone to that weakness? The man is listed as "prone to wander" (as in infidelity), but isn't the popular woman just as tempted?

As a student of personality types, I found the book most helpful in the areas of identifying clues of personality type in children, and the interaction between the personalities of husband and wife. If you've never read about personality types, this might be a good introduction, but be sure to also read at least one of the classic books like "Please Understand Me:Character and Temperament Types" by David Keirsey, and Marilyn Bates (ISBN 0960695400).

--Lynellen.com

5.0 out of 5 stars A Must Read Book, October 25, 2010

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Review - See all my reviews

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This review is from: A Woman's Guide to Personality Types: Enriching Your Family Relationships by Understanding the Four Temperaments (Paperback)

A Woman's Guide to Pesonality Types is a great self help book that will enrich every woman's life. It is an easy read and self motivating.

5.0 out of 5 stars Spot on, October 21, 2009

By 

S. Stentz (San Francisco Bay area) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: A Woman's Guide to Personality Types: Enriching Your Family Relationships by Understanding the Four Temperaments (Paperback)

I keep buying copies of this book to give out because it is so helpful in understanding the personalities of others!