Please Understand Me: Character and Temperament Types (first published in 1978 as Please Understand Me: An Essay on Temperament Styles) is a psychology book written by David Keirsey and Marilyn Bates which focuses on the classification and categorization of personality types.

Based upon the notion that people's values differ fundamentally from one another, Keirsey drew upon the views of several psychologists or psychiatrists: Ernst Kretschmer, Erich Adickes, Alfred Adler, Carl Jung, and Isabel Myers who are all mentioned as predecessors in the psychology of temperament or personality.

[2] Keirsey and Bates offer a personality inventory to help readers identify their type.

[3] Then Keirsey simplifies these sixteen types into four groups, whose archetypes he equates with the classical four temperaments: SP (Artisan), SJ (Guardian), NT (Rational), and NF (Idealist).

His methodology emphasizes the four temperaments, as he defines them, to generalize about different aptitudes and needs.