For the last several years, four single, successful young women have been meeting each week in various restaurants and bars in New York City to talk over their love life. The four are great friends, and over lunch or cocktails they compare notes on their dates and prospects, on their turn-ons and turn-offs, and on their hopes and dreams. This is the premise of HBO television's Emmy-award winning series, Sex and the City, and while the show is stylish, sexy, and smartly written, an important part of its appeal almost certainly comes from the archetypal differences in the four main characters.

Samantha Jones is a PR executive who specializes in throwing parties for clients, which is perfect since she herself is a fun-loving Artisan who's always ready to party....

Charlotte York ... has a fairly old-fashioned, traditional attitude toward sex and the single girl. With a true Guardian sensibility....

Carrie Bradshaw is...imaginative, introspective, emotionally vulnerable, and full of wonder about life and love. But most of all, and like any good Idealist....

Miranda Hobbes is a corporate attorney with a wide streak of skepticism and ambition--and also with a weakness for high tech gadgets. A Rational with a....

Here again, and this time in a story for adults, the four temperaments seem to provide the patterns of personality in a quartet of characters. There is not one attitude toward dating and mating in Sex and the City, but four: Party Time, Home & Family, Romance, and Career.

Just My Type

Like the Sex and the City characters, most of us, when involved in dating, think about the men and women we meet as being, or not being, our "type." What do we mean? ....

People Patterns