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What's My Type?

Discover Your Parenting Personality and Recognize What Motivates You

By Janet Levine

Now that you've completed the exercise, locate your choices on the chart below. Your dominant mode is reflected by the area with the most choices. You may find you have some choices that do not indicate this mode. There are sound reasons for this that has to do with the shifts you make from your dominant mode when you are under stress or in a particularly secure situation. Nonetheless your dominant mode is the one that shows the most circled choices.

1. a, 2. b, 3. b, 4. a, 5. c, 6. a, 7. a, 8. b, 9. c

1. c, 2. c, 3. a, 4. b, 5. a, 6. b, 7. c, 8. a, 9. a

1. b, 2. a, 3. c, 4. c, 5. b, 6. c, 7. b, 8. c, 9. b 2.

Research on personality shows that we make our way in the world primarily as Attachers, Detachers or Defenders. My nomenclature – Attacher, Detacher Defender – is based on the respected work of the pioneering psychologist Karen Horney, who in her book, Our Inner Conflicts (W. W. Norton & Company, 1993), describes three broad personality patterns as those of moving toward people, moving away from people and moving against people. I developed the terminology Attachers (who move toward people), Detachers (who move away from people) and Defenders (who move against people). People are a complex fusion of these three ways of being, but one is always dominant.