Psychobook tries to be both a witty activity book and an educational book about the history of psychology, intelligence and personality tests, and the combination is just really odd. On the education side of things there are some interesting examples of tests from the 1930s and 40s but the editors were perhaps limited by licensing and unable to show comprehensive examples of tests like the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI). They substitute questionnaires and drawings commissioned for the book as adaptations of these tools, but it's hard to know to what degree they're meant to be tongue-in-cheek, or to judge how good the adaptations are. The order of tests is roughly by test type but it doesn't break down cleanly, and the book feels like it jumps around. Some extremely popular tools like Meyers-Briggs aren't even mentioned, and the critique of tools like the Rorschach test is very surface-level. Overall you can learn a lot more about the history of personality tests from books like [b:The Cult of Personality: How Personality Tests Are Leading Us to Miseducate Our Children, Mismanage Our Companies, and Misunderstand Ourselves|487034|The Cult of Personality How Personality Tests Are Leading Us to Miseducate Our Children, Mismanage Our Companies, and Misunderstand Ourselves|Annie Murphy Paul|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1175175588l/487034._SX50_.jpg|475314]

As an activity book, it provides opportunities for readers to test themselves on the adapted exercises, but most felt even less in-depth than a standard BuzzFeed quiz. At one point in the book several writers are commissioned to invent their own personality questionnaires and these range from the ridiculous to the surreal. They were interesting to read but it felt unrealistic to expect readers to actually test themselves using those questionnaires.