History of Temperament and Temperament Theory
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a non-governmental foundationHistory of Temperament and Temperament Theory
"Tradition
has it that fat men are jolly and generous, that lean men are dour,
that short men are aggressive, and that strong men are silent and
confident. But tradition is sometimes wise and sometimes stupid, for
seldom does it distinguish between the accumulated wisdom of the ages
and the superstitions of ignorance."
The
doctrine of temperament can be traced to the theory of humors which is a
microcosmic form of the macrocosmic theory of the four elements (earth,
water, air, fire) as first proposed by Empedocles
(V B.C.) and the four qualities (dry, wet, cold, hot). Humoral theory
states that there are four body humors, and their proper mixture is the
condition of health. The theory is ascribed to the school of Cos and more precisely to Polybos, son-in-law to Hippocrates
(Sarton, 1954). Before him, the greek hylozoists had devoted their
attention to the cause of illness and the function of the humors as
evidenced in the teachings of Anaxagoras and more so in those of
Democratis and Alcmeon (Roback, 1928).
The
four humors are fluid substances: blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black
bile. A healthy condition is a result of balanced proportions to each
of the humors in respect to their combination, strength, and quality.
Discomfort and pain result from either a deficiency or excess of any one
or combination of these fluids. Each humor/fluid is differentiated by
its color, evident tactile differences, degree of warmth or cold, and
differences in dryness and moisture making temperaments subject to
seasonal and temperate influence. The principles of therapy were based
on cure by opposites (allopathy) (Levine, 1971).
The
theory of temperaments was the fourth in this dialectic ascension of
theories. Temperament theory suggested that though the proportions of
the humors may vary considerably, they could be reduced to four types of
mixtures or temperaments (crasis) according to the predominance of a
given humor. Since there were four humors, it was proposed that there
could only be four temperaments and therefore four kinds of healthy
equilibrium, not one, and that men could be subdivided into four
psychological groups named after the prevalent humor: the sanguine,
buoyant type; the phlegmatic, sluggish type; the choleric,
quick-tempered type; and the melancholic, dejected type. The theory was
alluded to in the Hippocratic The Nature of Man (Peri physios anthropou) and its elaboration was continued by Eristratos (III-1B.C.) and by Asclepiades (I-1B.C.). The Greek physician Galen's (130-200A.D.) treatise, Pericraison, De temperamentis
was so well formulated that it remained the standard authority until
the 16th century, when Andreas Vesalius and, later, William Harvey
amended Galen's theories with their medical discoveries.
East
Indian traditional Ayurvedic medicine has its basis in humoral
theories. That is, the human body is a macrocosm of the universe. The
seven body substances-bone, flesh, fat, blood, semen, marrow, and
chyle-are the product of three humors: kapha, or phlegm; pitta, or bile;
and vata, or wind. Health depends on the equilibrium of these humors,
and sickness is a disequilibrium. The point of equilibrium depends on
age, sex, temperament, climate, nutrition, and the nature of daily
activities.
A smaller branch of
traditional medicine on the subcontinent, and one common to Muslin
areas, is the practice of Yunani or Unani. This is the medicine of the
ancient Greeks, translated into Arabic and Persian and then slowly
modified by its practitioners, the Hakim. The works of Galen are
excepted figuratively and in detail. True to this Mediterranean
tradition, the medicine has four humors: yellow bile, black bile,
phlegm, and blood. These humors combine with the four primary qualities
of heat, cold, moisture, and dryness. If the humors and qualities are in
equilibrium, a person is healthy; if not, illness results.
Human
differences have been the subject of faith, theory, and observance
throughout history. Gnosticism was a religious philosophical dualism
that professed salvation through secret knowledge, or gnosis. The
movement reached a high point of development during the 2nd century A.D.
in the Roman and Alexandrian schools founded by Valentius. The Gnostic
sects set forth their teachings in complex systems of thought.
Characteristic of their position was the doctrine that all material
reality was evil. Central to their convictions of salvation is the
freeing of the spirit from its imprisonment in matter. In Gnostic
thought, a divine seed is imprisoned in every person. The purpose of
salvation is to deliver this lost seed from the matter. Gnostics
classified people according to these three categories: (1) Gnostics, or
those certain of salvation, because they were under the influence of the
spirit (pneumatikoi); (2) those not fully Gnostic, but capable of
salvation through knowledge (psychikoi); and (3) those so dominated by
mater that they were beyond salvation(hylikoi). Temperament theory
played a predominant role in Gnostic faith.
Wycliff's
sermons, published in 1380, appear to be among the first English
literature to allude to the temperaments, or rather, the humors.
Shakespeare described the four temperaments in Cynthia's Revels and later in Every Man Out of His Humor. Robert Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy provides a detailed description of the humoral doctrine.
Further
speculations arrived with the onset of the scientific revolutions of
Copernicus, Galilei, and Harvey. At the onset of the eighteenth century,
Andreas Rudiger in his Physica Divina reduced the number of elements responsible for temperamental differences to two: aither as cause of the light qualities, and air
as cause of the heavy qualities. With Harvey's discoveries of the
circulation of the blood, temperament emphasis shifted from the
composition of the blood to its movement as the determinant of
differences in temperament. "In a word, the humoral doctrine was beginning to change into a solid theory." (Roback, 1928, p.48).
Stahl
and later Hoffman, proposed to take into consideration three factors
into their temperament theory: (a) the constitution of the blood, (b)
the porosity of the tissue, and (c) the width of the blood vessels.
Haller in the middle of the eighteenth century laid the beginnings of
modern experimental physiology resulting in the theory of humors
receiving a permanent setback. Haller proposed that the connection
between the blood and the temperaments is not a necessary one but that
parts through which the blood flows, or rather their strength and
irritability, are fundamental in accounting for temperamental
differences. With research in nerve physiology, the doctrine of
temperaments took a new direction. The nervous system was not to be the
seat of temperament (Roback, 1928). Chief among the new scholars was a
student of Haller. Wrisberg combined the four humors into a double
category: choleric-sanguine, and melancholic-phlegmatic.
At this same time, the science of philosophy stepped in to "dismiss all the materialistic theories as either worthless or so highly speculative as to be of little assistance" (Roback, 1928, p.50). Plater's Philosophische Aphorismen and Kant's Anthropolgie
produced new sets of temperaments. Platter proposed that temperaments
be composed of: (a) the attic or mental, derived from the preponderance
of the higher physic organ (auditory, visual, and tactile); (b) the
animal temperament, resulting from the preponderance of the second organ
over the first; (c) the heroic temperament, where both organs or
systems are well matched; and (d) the faint temperament produced by the
lack of energy in either of the two organs. Kant's treatment of
character places temperament between two marks of individuality which he
calls characteristic and character. Temperament is regarded by Kant to be a mode of sensibility. "The
temperaments he considers both as physiological facts, such as physical
constitution and complexion of humors, and psychological tendencies due
to the composition of the blood" (Roback, 1928, p.52).
The
phrenologistic teachings of Gall and Spurtzheim attempted to create a
new science which purported to localize abilities and disabilities to
specific regions of the brain, and dismissing the determinate faculties.
Spurtzheim in Phrenology in Connection with the Study of Physiognomy
considered the study of temperaments as the first step in phrenology.
Phrenological temperaments became known as (a) the motive, based on the
muscular system, (b) the vital, indicating a predominance of the
alimentary system, and (c) the mental temperament, drawing its strength
from the nervous system.
Toward the
middle of the eighteenth century, the French physician Halle
distinguished between general temperaments, partial temperaments, and
acquired temperaments. General temperaments were linked with the
vascular, nervous, and motor systems. Partial temperaments corresponded
to the various regions of the body and the fluids, pituita, and bile.
The acquired temperaments resulted from environmental influences on the
primary temperaments (Roback, 1928).
The
study of temperament in the nineteenth century represents an embodiment
of ideas from immediate predecessors. Influenced by the powers of
electricity, Schelling felt that temperaments shared the same fate of
opposites as did electricity. Organisms were said to contain two polar
principles of gravity and light (substance and movement) which "were
it not for the predominance of the one or the other in the individual,
would yield total identity, where all differences would be obliterated"
(Roback, 1928, p.63). Temperament anomalies occurred when there was an
imbalance in the three dimensions. Temperaments according to Johannes
Muller became the forms of psychic life. A co-worker of Muller, the
German-Jewish anatomist Jacob Henle, based his theory of temperaments on
the tone of the nervous system, speed of the reaction and its duration
(Roback, 1928).
In 1795, Shiller conceptualized two psychological types, the Idealist and the Realist. The German philosopher Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche in his first book, The Birth of Tragedy
(1872; English translation, 1968), introduced his famous distinction
between the Appolonian, or rational, element in human nature and the
Dionysian, or passionate, element as exemplified in the Greek gods
Apollo and Dionysis. With a blend of the two principles, either in art
or in life, humanity achieves a momentary harmony with the Primordial
Mystery. The Swiss writer of epic poetry, stories, novels, dramas, and
essays, Carl Georg Friedrich Spittler in his epic Prometheus and Epimetheus
(1881; English translation, 1931), reflecting the pessimism of
Schopenhauer and the romantacism of Niezsche describes two types called Prometheus and Epimetheus.
In 1892, Pilo's Nuovi Studi sul Caratter
looked for the basic differences of man in the chemical composition of
the blood and its thermicity. Pilo identifies four general temperament
characters: the plethoric, the serious, the bilious, and the lymphatic.
In 1907, Dr. Erich Adickes proposed dividing man into four world views:
dogmatic, agnostic, traditional, and innovative. Alfred Adler spoke
similarly of four mistaken goals: recognition, power, service, and
revenge. In 1920, Eduard Spranger told of four human values that set
people apart: religious, theoretic, economic, and artistic (Keirsey,
1984). The American philosopher and psychologist William James, one of
the founders and leading proponents of pragmatism, considered
philosophies to be expressions of personal temperament and developed a
correlation between tough-minded and tender-minded temperaments and empiricist and rationalist positions in philosophy.
Carl
Gustav Jung (1923), felt he possessed two separate personalities: an
outer public self involved with the world and his family and peers and a
secret inner self that felt a special closeness to God. The interplay
between these selves formed a central theme of Jung's personal life and
contributed to his later emphasis on the individual's striving for
integration and wholeness. Jung proposed that motivation be understood
in terms of a general creative life energy-the libido-capable of being
invested in different directions and assuming a variety of different
forms. The two principal directions of the libido are extroversion
(outward into the world of other people and objects) and introversion
(inward into the realm of images, ideas, and the unconscious). Persons
in whom the former directional tendency predominates are extroverts,
while those in whom the latter is strongest are introverts. Jung also
proposed to group people according to which of four psychological
functions or types is most highly developed: thinking, feeling, sensation, or intuition.
Shortly after the publication of Jung's book, Psychological Types, Ernst Kretschmer (1925) published his book, Physique and Character in which he describes the "Cycloid" and "Schizoid" types. In 1942, William Sheldon published The Varieties of Temperament
in which he presents a system for treating the problem of individual
differences in terms of what appears to be basic components of
temperament. These components in turn are tied back to and interpreted
in terms of basic components of morphology. The emphasis is upon the
constitutional factors, upon the relatively stable qualities of an
individual that give him his basic individuality. Sheldon's study
extended through a period of five years analyzing the morphological and
temperamental characteristics of 200 young men. Sheldon created a scale
for temperament based upon 60 traits categorized into three groups:
Viscerotonia-characterized by general relaxation, love of
comfort,sociability, congeniality, gluttony for food, for people, and
for affection; Somatotonia-characterized by a predominance of muscular
activity and of vigorous bodily assertiveness; and
Cerbratotonia-characterized by a predominance of the element of
restraint, inhibition, and of the desire for concealment.
A major breakthrough in typology came in 1942 with the emergence of the Myers Briggs Type Indicator
(MBTI). Isabelle Myers and Katherine Briggs based their conceptual
framework on the typology created by Carl Jung. They felt that
differences concern the way people prefer to use their minds,
specifically the way in which people make judgements. Myers and Briggs
identified "perceiving" as the process of becoming aware of things, people, occurrences, and ideas. "Judging"
includes the perceived process of coming to conclusions. Together,
perception and judgement govern much of one's outer behavior.
Joseph
Hill (NP) looked to develop in education the level of precision and
accountability found in medicine and law. He based his work on Gestalt
psychology and research by Kagan and Witkin. Hill developed the concept
of cognitive style mapping and the classification of learners in terms
of sensory preference; Auditory, Visual, or Tactile-Kinesthetic.
In 1928, William Marston in Emotions of Normal People
investigated motor consciousness as the basis of feeling and emotion.
Marston's psychonic theory of consciousness traced the affective
consciousness to mechanistic-type causes; that is, to nerve impulses,
thence to bodily changes and, ultimately, to environmental stimuli.
Marston viewed people as having two axis with their actions tending to
be active or passive depending upon the individual's perception of the
environment as either antagonistic or favorable. By placing these axis
at right angles, four quadrants were formed with each circumscribing a
behavior pattern; dominance produces activity in an antagonistic
environment, inducement produces activity in a favorable environment,
steadiness produces passivity in a favorable environment, and compliance
produces passivity in an antagonistic environment. Marston proposed
that learning by inducement and submission is pleasant; learning by
trial and error (compliance and dominance) is painful.
Walter
Clark's Activity Vector Analysis (AVA) was developed as a psychometric
instrument around Marston's theory. John Geier's (1972) Personal Profile: WORK Behavior Characteristic Interpretation,
describes behaviors in terms of how others see you, your behavior under
pressure, and how you see yourself. This theory of dimensional behavior
adheres to the precept that behavior changes can and does take place.
The four-section indicator developed by Geier tests for Dominance (D),
Influence (I), Steadiness (S), and Compliance (C).
Keith
Golay, 1982) described four basic and distinct learning types by the
individual's pattern of learning. Based on the work of David Keirsey and
Marilyn Bates, as well as Isabelle Myers, Golay believes that
personality predisposes the learner to certain ways of thinking,
wanting, liking, and acting. Golay classifies learners as; Actual
Spontaneous, Actual Routine, Conceptual Specific, or Conceptual Global.
David
Keirsey (1984) combined Kretschmer's temperament hypothesis with Jung's
behavior description, and with Nietzsche's and Spitteler's Greek
typology. Keirsey notes themes in the various observations and the
consistent tendency of human behavior. He observed four patterns:
Sensing Perceiver (SP), Sensing Judger (SJ), Intuitive Thinker (NT), and
Intuitive Feeler (NF). These four patterns are temperaments-the way in
which human personality interacts with the environment.
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