‘Anna Funder’s Stasiland demonstrates that great, original reporting is still possible. She found her subject in East Germany, went for it bravely and delivers the goods in a heartbreaking, beautifully written book. A classic for sure.’
— Claire Tomalin, Guardian Books of the Year

‘What might have been a harrowing book is raised into something more engaging and important by the quality of Funder’s prose. At once lyrical, bitter, funny and sad, her writing releases many individuals of their stories – a second liberation.’
— Jonathan Heawood, The Observer

‘Stasiland is very much a personal exploration of the Stasi’s legacy, with Funder—and the reader—struggling to grasp its enormity. Funder takes risks in pursuit of her story, encountering the paranoia, pain and tackiness left in the Stasi’s wake. Stasiland isn’t just an eye-opener; Funder’s dark, stylish narrative makes it a genuinely compelling read.’
— The Age

‘If I had to single out just one paperback this year, it would be Anna Funder’s Stasiland. Funder brings home with chilling detail the sheer human wastefulness of a political system built on deception and betrayal. It’s a terrible story, but written with vivacity and wit.’
— Simon Shaw, Daily Mail

‘Filtered through Funder’s own keen perspective, these dramatic tales highlight the courage that ordinary people can display in torturous circumstances.’
— Publishers Weekly

‘Impressive… Funder’s fully humanized portrait of the Stasi’s tentacles reads like a warning of totalitarian futures to come.’
— Kirkus Reviews

‘Funder explores the space between the conscience and the soul, converting reflective questions about cowardice and courage into a gripping account of a city’s search for identity under the unexpected burden of freedom…Stasiland will provoke both recognition and surprise in anyone familiar with Berlin as it used to be. For those who are not, it is an intriguing introduction to a city where life will always be an emotional cabaret.’
— Scotland on Sunday

‘A brilliant and necessary book about oppression and history… Here is someone who knows how to tell the truth.’
— Evening Standard Books of the Year

‘I began the sprightly prose prepared for an indictment of the horrors of a victimised society, and finished laughing along with the frank-speaking characters Funder found. Wit survives and inhumanity is often undermined by its ironies.’
— Iain Finlayson, The Times

‘The stories are riveting and beautifully told…her indictment of modern ‘Ostalgia’… is absolutely convincing.’
— Sunday Times

‘Funder writes breezily, with a dry wit, and the book fleshes out the familiar picture of a joyless Communist state, meditating on how people thought, felt, and survived. Weaving her own observations into the appalling, inspiring and sometimes hilarious testimonies she hears, she vividly communicates her fascination with this monstrous, absurd country.’
— Daily Telegraph

‘Meticulous and compassionate… a heroic act of listening.’
— London Review of Books

‘If I had to single out just one paperback this year, it would be Anna Funder’s Stasiland. Funder brings home with chilling detail the sheer human wastefulness of a political system built on deception and betrayal. It’s a terrible story, but written with vivacity and wit.’
— Simon Shaw, Daily Mail Paperback Pick of 2004

‘I was gripped…highly personal, intelligent and disturbing accounts of living under repressive regimes’
— Deborah Moggach, Observer Books of the Year

‘Anna Funder’s Stasiland is essential reading for anyone going East. Funder, an Australian living and working in Germany, became obsessed with the silence surrounding the ongoing presence of so many undercover informers after unification, and wrote this fascinating, funny and very human account of her attempts to discover the truth behind the Stasi.’
— Ivana Bacik, Irish Times Books of the Year

‘A journey into the bizarre, scary, secret history of the former East Germany that is both relevant and riveting.’
— Anthony Sattin, Travel Books of the Year, Sunday Times

‘Explores the legacy of the Stasi in the former DDR from both victims and persecutors.’
— Neil Tennant (Pet Shop Boys), My Choice in The Times

‘A compelling, sad, blackly funny and well-written book.’
— Choice Magazine

‘Funder talks to cleaners students and even former members of the Stasi to evoke the spirit of the birfurcate, extraordinarily modern city of Berlin.’
— Marie-Claire

‘The true poignancy of this book lies in the evocation Funder conjures up of life under a brutal regime. Stasiland is a book of depth and conviction. Funder brings a novelist’s sensibilities to this previously overlooked period of history. It is a highly impressive debut.’
— Traveller Magazine

‘Stasiland takes us on a grim journey into a country in which the ratio of watchers to watched was even higher than that of the Soviets under communism. But that’s nothing compared to the mind-boggling accounts and anecdotes collected by Funder, most of them tragic, some occasionally comic in a black way, about the impact of the Wall.’
— Caroline Baum interview, The Times

‘There is much humour and even affection in her portraits… In theory at least, torture was as illegal under Hitler as it was under Honecker. It was, however, a brave man or woman who drew attention to the brutality of East German prisons. All this and much else comes wonderfully to life in Funder’s racy account.’
— Guardian

‘Funder is a superb interviewer… she truly excels in the rendering of her sessions with former Stasi employees. This foreign perspective adds a unique dimension to Stasiland. Funder seems to be asking all the questions East and West Germans should be asking themselves. In the book’s stunning opening, she describes herself being hungover in Berlin and bumping into things on the street: ‘Tomorrow bruises will develop on my skin, like a picture from a negative.’ It is a perfect description of the astonishing effect Stasiland has on the reader: a slow-motion understanding of decades of human pain and cruelty.’
— Elena Lappin, Sunday Times

‘In a well-researched, personalised account, Funder… sets out to explore and explain eastern Germany as it is now. With the quick eye of a curious outsider she succeeds in teasing out personal accounts that offer a sometimes shocking, occasionally bizarre and often amusing portrayal of a place that, despite its undeniable achievements since 1989, is still something of a parallel world within united Germany.’
— Financial Times Magazine

‘In Stasiland, her first book, [Funder] spiritedly plunges herself into “this land gone wrong” and attempts to understand a regime like the German Democratic Republic through the stories of ordinary men and women, “not just the activists or the famous writers.” The result is a terrific act of life-giving to a people—17 million of them—who have hitherto lacked not just a voice but an audience.’
— Nicholas Shakespeare, Telegraph

‘Brilliantly illustrates the weird, horrifying, viciously cruel place that was Cold War East Germany… As well as the horror, Funder writes superbly of the absurdities of the Stasi.’
— Andrew Roberts, Evening Standard

‘Brilliant account of the brutal histories of people whose lives were shaped by the Berlin Wall.’
— You Really Must Read, Sunday Times

‘A highly-readable and stylishly-written account of the Stasi’s 40 year reign of terror.’
— Irish Times

‘Funder combines a compelling narrative with a humanity that breaks down history into a living and breathing reality, returning dignity to a people who were governed by an all-seeing and all-condemning-eye… a beautiful and very moving book, it’s a wake up call to a world that prefers to forget and a testament to the importance of remembering that history is made up of personal stories that need to be heard.’
— Leeds Guide

‘A fascinating book. It is written with rare, literary flair. I can think of no better introduction to the brutal reality of East German repression.’
— Sunday Telegraph

‘Funder examines a regime built on lies: truly a story that needed to be told.’
— Good Book Guide

‘Funder’s eye for eccentric detail and her ear for cutting dialogue bring these interviews with ex-Stasi men and survivors alive.’
— Good Book Guide

‘She approaches her subject impartially and without the baggage of internal German debates, she retells the classic stories of perpertrators and victims, stories from the Stasiland… instructive above all is the juxtaposition of differing ideologies and fates, which say much about each other. Anna Funder remains an alert observer and never slips into sentimentality.’
— Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

‘The detail of her cases is so powerful as to disarm’
— Times Literary Supplement

‘Funder’s strength lies in not trying to be all – encompassing, but rather to make the phenomenon of East Germany more intimate – to put it on a level which we can all understand, the personal level… Born out of a simple curiosity, Funder’s book will stand the test of time and will always be a sobering reminder of the dangers of blind adherence to an ideology… compelling reading’
— Cape Times (South Africa)

‘Sickening and brilliant.’
— Mail on Sunday

‘A terrific read.’
— Evening Standard

‘Tells extraordinary tales of the country after the fall of the Berlin Wall… She also writes superbly about what it is like to live in Berlin today’
— Sunday Telegraph

‘Written with rare literary flair. I can think of no better introduction to the brutal reality of East German repression’
— Sunday Telegraph

‘Memoir and travelogue combine in this moving, Samuel Johnson prize-winning look at the former East Germany and its terrifyingly intrusive state security system’
— The Sunday Times

‘Short-listed for the Guardian First Book Award and the Samuel Johnson Prize, Funder’s impressive debut resembles Asne Seierstad’s similarly quasi- anthropological The Bookseller of Kabul’
— John Dugdale, The Guardian

‘Stasiland, Anna Funder’s award-winning expose of the devastating effects of the work of the secret police inside East Germany, is leaving bookshops at a rate rarely seen with serious factual works… At times it reads more like a thriller than a historical survey’
— Vanessa Thorpe, The Observer (News)

‘Her eye for eccentric detail and her ear for cutting dialogue bring these interviews to vivid life… A worthy winner of this year’s BBC Four Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction.’
— Good Book Guide

‘A fascinating book… If you want a glimpse of what life was like under Stalinism this book is an enjoyable read.’
— Socialist Review

‘Wonderful debut… Funder displays an eye for telling detail in charting the intimate stories of ordinary people and ex-Stasi officers’
— Irish Times

‘Many of the revelations are quite incredible.’
— Publishing News

‘As well as the horror, Funder writes superbly of the absurdities of the Stasi.’
— Yorkshire Post

‘She describes the curious intoxication of uncovering the lost world of the cold war… and what she finds, among its dead letter drops and torture chambers, is truly chilling.’
— The Scotsman

‘Anna Funder’s Stasiland offers a series of fascinating stories about people whom the author encountered on her visit to the former German Democratic Republic after the fall of the infamous Berlin Wall in November 1989… It’s a book which offers remarkable insight into the lives of individual Germans in the communist East under the ever-watchful eyes of the internal security army of the DDR, the Stasi’
— Canberra Times

‘Anna Funder’s portraits of these products of State paranoia are by turns funny, heartbreaking and stirring. She tells the story of the collapse of a way of life with wit, style and sympathy.’
— Marie Claire

‘A compelling hybrid of journalism, biography and personal history… In clean striking prose she shifts with graceful ease from the telling blushes and tics, habits and souvenirs of her subjects to the concrete evidence of official documents to reveal the persistent effects of vast events. But her great skill is the ability to contextualise the personal story with larger-scale historical events… Funder finds a quiet profundity in all the arrogance, myopia, frailty, compassion and ostalgie of her subjects and reveals the joys and claustrophobic particularities of life in the GDR.’
— HQ Magazine

‘Anna Funder has written an absolutely compelling book about the recent history of the former East Germany… Booksellers should have no hesitation in recommending Stasiland to all and sundry’
— Lorien Kaye, Editor of AB&P

‘Funder’s very readable blend of investigative and reflective reporting already shows considerable talent – short-listed in her native Australia for various literary awards. Recommended.’
— Publishing News

‘Debut author, Funder, uncovers extraordinary tales of survival and subversion in the most perfected surveillance state of all time.’
— Publishing News

‘Anna Funder’s Stasiland is an exceptionally strong debut, a perceptive and gracefully written account of the author’s experiences in Berlin during the 1990s, seeking out the stories of those who had experienced the oppressive regime of the German Democratic Republic.’
— The Bookseller

‘Grim tales from the dismal heyday of the GDR, the most monitored society in human history.’
— Word magazine

‘Funder recounts dissidents’ tales of having their shoes irradiated and families betraying each other. Fascinating.’
— FHM (01/12/08)

ABC-TV, Foreign Correspondent: ‘Stasiland – Germany’
Purchase

French Interview, En 3 mots

ABC Radio Podcast – Anna reading Stasiland in 13 episodes
Currently unavailable online

Anna Funder in Conversation with Richard Fidler
Click here to listen

Anna Funder Co-hosts The Conversation Hour with Jon Faine
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Talking to Alice Springs Radio
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‘In “Stasiland,” writer Anna Funder talks to former members of the Stasi – the communist East German security apparatus – and to the people whose lives they destroyed.’
— Charles Taylor, Salon.com
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‘And so we begin. Caught inside a “headspace.” Having trouble with our borders, as if the damaged compass of our narrator will map its own unpleasant realities across us the further as we move into her story. Bruises of another kind.’
— Mark Mordue, Freezerbox
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‘After 23 publishers’ rejections and a warning to “wear a flak jacket”, Anna Funder was understandably apprehensive – actually “scared senseless” – about launching her book Stasiland in Germany this year.’
— Malcolm Knox, Sydney Morning Herald
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‘Da Anne Funder lanserte boken sin i Tyskland spurte folk i vest henne: “Hva er galt med oss?” I Øst-Berlin stod en fyllik og ropte: “Jeg vil ikke være tysk mer!”’
— Halvor Finess Tretvoll, Ny Tid
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‘Today, the(sydney)magazine publishes its annual list of Sydney’s 100 most creative, provocative and inspiring people. Here are 10 influential people whose voices have been hard to ignore in 2011.’
— Stephanie Wood, SMH Top 100, The Provocateurs
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‘Miriam Weber is a small, thoughtful woman in her forties. She lives in a rooftop apartment in Leipzig. The sense of space around her helps, she says. Helps her shake off the memories of prison. Helps her breathe under the weight of the unresolved past.’
— The Scotsman
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“But you said— But why can’t I, you said—”

“I’ll have that once more,” Tom interrupts calmly, “this time without resentment.”

I laugh, incredulous. “Is that how you direct your actors?” If this is what I think it is, I may have just stumbled on the Holy Grail of parenting – how to get them to do what you want, happily – from a professional who directs people for a living.

“No,” Tom smiles. “To them I say, ‘I’ll have that once more. This time without acting.’”

I visit Tom during week three of the five-week rehearsal period for Aeschylus’ The Oresteia (his own, sparkling adaptation, currently being performed until 4 July). The rehearsal room is a grand space on the wharf across from the Harbour Bridge. Once, it would have housed bales of wool or war supplies ready for loading; now, the nine young actors in the STC’s permanent group, The Residents, are being led through the paces of intergenerational revenge here. The wall in front of them has been converted into a massive blackboard chalked with a ten-generational family tree of the ancients – from Zeus’s unions with Leda and a nymph, down to Helen, Clytemnestra, Orestes and Electra. On other walls there are photographs, sensual and eerie, to evoke a mood for the actors; sketches of the clever modern costumes (“Cassandra in very bad Jimmy Choo imitations,” as Tom says); extracts from Graves on the play and some pages of Jung. The room is calm and focused, though there are over a dozen people here: set and costume designers, a music director, an assistant director, a photographer and me. This is a room in which something personal, or perhaps difficult and private, is being brought out in front of us, practised and under direction, because we cannot, or do not, do it for ourselves.

The actors stand on their marks in gestures of costumes – hooded parkas over jeans or, for the Danaë and Clytemnestra, long skirts. Orestes has returned to find his sister Electra at their father’s gravesite, which is being interpreted vertically, like a roadside memorial with flowers. Electra is in skinny jeans and a jumper, her face, beautiful as a Giotto, covered with a black veil. The girl is so powerful in her grief for her father that I want to look away, or at least to be in the dark. Tom walks about in Blundstones but makes no sound; he is a picture of focused attention. Once, he stops to pull up Clytemnestra’s hood. The scene continues, till one of the Danaë forgets to come in with her line.

“Sorry, sorry,” the young woman says, out of character.

“Hey, there’s no sorry here, remember?” Tom chides gently.

“No. Sorry,” she says again and smiles back.

Later, I ask him about what happened. “I’ve noticed a tendency, particularly in young women,” he says, “to frequently apologise, which means their default position is that they are in the wrong. So, partly in a joking way, our rule is ‘don’t apologise’ for something like forgetting a line or a piece of direction. It’s to do with self-esteem.” The other rule in the room is similarly themed: the actors are only to praise one another. “Because,” Tom laughs at himself, “the only criticism comes from me, the benign patriarch.”

But the issue is a serious one. The difference between what works and what doesn’t in the theatre, Tom explains, “is simply confidence”. So a large part of directing is keeping this up in the actors and part of his job is “to absorb the anxiety in the room”. The Residents are aged between 24 and 35 and, while they are all professionals, Tom believes it takes at least ten major productions before an actor is truly in command of their instrument – which is themselves – onstage. The process is particularly hard for the women, because they have to learn to be confident in their bodies “with 200 people looking at them and not feel like a flirt or a slut or guilty for being the centre of attention”.

The stage is an inherently sexualised arena. “As soon as the spotlight is on you, it makes for an imaginary world, which is an erotic place. And there’s a large group of people sitting in the dark watching as if they are not there, which is the definition of voyeurism.” Tom says it usually takes a female actor till she is about 40 to overcome the sexism that makes young women uncomfortable and self-conscious. “So you get the situation where you have a woman of 40 playing Hedda Gabler or Portia.” But, tragically, it’s just at that age, in the world we live in, that she encounters another form of sexism: she is considered too old to hire.

One of Cate Blanchett and Andrew Upton’s aims with The Residents is to speed up the actors’ development, “so, instead of reaching that point at 40, they reach it at 30”. “And how do you do that?” I ask. I am genuinely curious; if this crippling effect of patriarchy can be unlearnt, we all need to know how.

Tom opens out his hands. “How do you grow up?”

It’s both not an answer and the only one. I think of our two little girls and wonder aloud whether he’ll be trying to teach this confidence to his daughter.

“Of course,” he says, “but it’s too early for her! She needs to learn boundaries and guidelines before she learns liberation.”

The need to “grow up” is an issue in another sense for male actors, who often won’t have the emotional maturity to play, say, Hamlet till their mid- to late-forties. “Some of us,” Tom admits, “stay young in our lives for too long. I’ve resisted [growing up]. I don’t drive. I live like a student. I don’t buy clothes – I find them left behind in laundromats. I don’t want to grow up.”

But when I look at him I do see a grown-up: someone who can imagine lives from different points of view. I see someone who has one foot in an imaginary world that makes sense of this one, in which he doesn’t bother to drive or save money or buy clothes. It is a world in which he can imagine an ancient grave as a roadside shrine or Cassandra in heels, or, indeed, the liberation of young women from the tyranny of scrutiny – and I will buy a ticket to that every time.

Back to Writing

Recently I was reminded of this manoeuvre, in which a person’s real material or political motivations are reduced to a personality characteristic, when I read of a proposal to use personality tests on Victorian police in an attempt to identify potential ‘leakers’. The Office of Police Integrity’s (OPI) discussion paper, ‘Sensitive and Confidential Information in a Police Environment’, is a sophisticated and carefully worded analysis of some of the situations in which police (apparently endemically) leak confidential information. It examines both inadvertent leaks (gossip) and deliberate or malicious ones (for financial gain or in reprisal for real or perceived injustices). It suggests that leaking is “more complicated than just an individual’s frustration or ego” and that “it is likely that any act of disclosure is overlaid by personality preferences or traits, which, in the absence of any discipline or guidance, can overcome an officer’s recognition of their obligations.” The report recommends the Myers–Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) test as a way of identifying these personality ‘preferences’ or traits that need overcoming.

Greg Davies, secretary of the Victorian Police Association, says, “It is never right to leak operational information or anything that might endanger a person.” But he admits, “we encourage our people to leak – to communicate to the outside authorities in certain circumstances because it’s the right thing to do.” Sometimes, Davies tells me, the mechanisms within the police force for internal change are inadequate. When complaints sent up the chain of command fall on deaf ears, police lower down the ranks will leak to the media “in the community’s interest”, using mechanisms such as ‘The Rumour File’ on Melbourne radio station 3AW. This occurred recently, when police union members felt regional police stations were “cannibalised” and left understaffed because officers were sent to Melbourne CBD to deal with escalating gang violence. Davies believes that “people are entitled to know there aren’t enough people there to look after them.”

Is it possible to stress-test a human being for loyalty – like concrete for load-bearing – before the event arises in which that loyalty is tested? In particular, is it possible to test, on paper, for loyalty strong enough that a person will play by the rules of an organisation but not so strong as to prevent them from blowing the whistle (leaking, going to the media) if they consider the organisation itself to be dysfunctional or corrupt?

Davies supports his members’ leaking “when things go awry”. This kind of whistleblowing is not the result of a particular psychological characteristic: it is strategic. Leaked information damaging to Julia Gillard during the election campaign was widely believed to be an act of revenge, or spite, or a tactic to force a concession for a future appointment. It was a matter of vicious but – let’s face it – fairly standard political strategy and not, at least in the first instance, a matter of personality. This kind of ‘strategic leaking’ occurred in the Victorian police force when the former assistant commissioner, Noel Ashby, launched his “drive for power” against his then-colleague Simon Overland for the top job. Peter Geyer, an expert in interpreting MBTI results, differentiates this form of leaking from whistleblowing. He says any ‘type’ is capable of this behaviour because it’s “to do with power”. Whistleblowing, by contrast, is to do with conscience, a sense of duty owed beyond the organisation. He agreed that strategic leaking was ubiquitous, in politics, banking and large organisations “where people are after the main job”. I asked him whether the MBTI could test for it. “No,” he replied, “because it’s pathological.” The MBTI only deals with ‘normal’ psychology, so it wouldn’t pick this up.

As I write this, I am waiting for Geyer to give me an assessment of my personality (at least in so far as it is ‘normal’). I completed the MBTI two hours ago, after the paying $89 to CCP Inc., the publishers of the test, and Geyer’s fee of $165. The test, based on Jungian archetypes, sorts the human personality into 16 different types. I will soon know what I am on a scale of Extroversion–Introversion, Sensing–Intuition, Thinking–Feeling and Judging–Perceiving. I found the 144 questions, each with two answers to choose from, disappointingly general and obvious: Do you let your head rule your heart or your heart rule your head? Do you like to do things at the last minute or plan ahead? Does the unexpected excite or stress you?

I wanted sneakier, more complex situational questions that could reveal me to myself. Then again, my bad attitude may be a symptom of my ‘type’, which, the theory has it, I can try to overcome once diagnosed.

The MBTI is probably the most popular psychological test in the world. The CCP Inc. website says, “as many as 2 million assessments are administered annually to individuals, including employees of most Fortune 500 companies.” The test has also been conducted in the military, the Pentagon and in churches. Its popularity, of course, does not mean that it shows what it says it shows or even that it is empirically valid – in the same way that full pews in churches are evidence of many interesting things about the human condition but no evidence of the existence of God.

The MBTI is popular in part because its founder, Isabel Myers, set out in the 1940s to examine “what’s right with people”, as opposed to psychologists, who seemed keener to find out what was wrong with them. Consequently, the 16 types into which humanity is corralled are all described in generalised, positive terms.

I was reminded – perhaps unfairly – of the psychologist Bertram Forer’s experiment in 1948. Forer gave his students results from a personality test, which each of them overwhelmingly considered accurate. In fact, he had given them all the same, vaguely worded text – based on horoscope copy – that could apply to many people. “You have a great need for other people to like and admire you”; “you have a tendency to be critical of yourself”; “you have a great deal of unused capacity, which you have not turned to your advantage …” Two factors made the results credible: that the students believed the result had been individually tailored to them, and that they respected Forer.

More specifically, the MBTI has been criticised for its low-level re-test accuracy. A study in the American journal Research in Psychological Type found that, when people are re-tested, even at intervals as short as five weeks, as many as 50% turn out to be a different personality type. However, the American professor of psychology David Funder (no relation) says tests do exist that are “excellent predictors of job performance”. These measure “conscientiousness” in terms of “motivation to do well, organisational skills, and what’s generally called ‘work ethic’”. But, “none of this has much to do with cheating of various kinds, including stealing from the till or leaking company secrets. No personality test has shown any ability to predict this kind of thing.” Funder argues that the MBTI “is marketed brilliantly and has some intuitive appeal, but is pretty much useless for personnel selection”. Although “honesty and integrity are personality variables, for reasons that are pretty obvious when you think about it for a minute, [they] are not well detected by self-report tests. It’s not very helpful to ask people whether they are liars.” Funder suggests the old-fashioned method of checking people’s references is a better way to assess these things.

Heidi Ravenscroft, author of the OPI paper, stressed that reference-checking is an important part of police recruitment. As for whistleblowing, she identified the psychology of this acutely as an “unspoken promise” felt by the employee, that “I’ll be loyal to you [the institution] if you are to me.” It is important, she said, “to continue to make sure they feel valued.” But the discussion paper makes no specific recommendations on internal complaints procedures, focusing instead on education and discipline measures, and personality testing.

And this, I suppose, is what reminded me of the East German example. People wanted to leave that country because of things wrong with it, not themselves. Similarly, with those leaking for money, or leaking for power, or leaking because something is awry within the organisation, the causes are possibly more easily identifiable outside than in – and then, perhaps, remedied. If the mantra of the 1970s was “the personal is political” – an attempt to liberate people from various kinds of previously unseen domestic oppression – this psychologisation phenomenon is its inverse, in a conservative time. It is making the political – a call (or need) for institutional change, say – into the personal (‘You got a problem with that? – You’re the problem’). Although, as it turns out, with the Myers–Briggs, no one has a problem.

When Peter Geyer calls with my results, I am wondering whether I am an INTJ (as he thinks Kevin Rudd and Simon Overland might be) or an ISTJ (like John Howard and, in his view, many police). He starts by explaining in detail the meaning of the categories in each of the four groups, and then asks me to rate myself as one or the other.

“Which one does it look like from the test?” I ask.

“I can’t tell you that,” he replies, explaining that self-assessment is an important part of the test. “You’ve got to say, ‘well this is me’ and then I send you the results.”

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the way I assess myself is the way I come out on the form when he sends it through. Later, when I question him about the accuracy of the MBTI, he tells me it’s officially about 70–80% accurate, and, in his experience, 85%. When I ask how that is measured, he explains that it’s by self-assessment again.

The MBTI is a huge and long-wearing fashion in corporate, government and military recruiting spheres. Perhaps what it does offer is a way for people to agree on a starting vocabulary for talking about that most complex of things – themselves – and for trying to understand one another. That it is a vocabulary divorced from more tangible differentiators between us – of gender, class, intelligence, values and ambition (to name a few) – only serves to help find common ground. Discourses of the soul in other eras served a similar purpose: invented metaphorical languages in which we try to get a grip on ourselves. The aim of this one is not to weed and sift the pure from the damned, which is a relief. But, in terms of proving anything about you, such as whether you are likely to leak or not, it is probably about the same degree of hokum.

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