Temperaments And Personality Types, Part Four: Modernity

As we saw in the last post and the post on the Middle Ages' perspective, Humorism and the traditional view of the temperaments had become a part of the European consciousness. Modernity started out no different. To quote again from David Keirsey's Please Understand Me II:

"When William Harvey discovered the circulation of blood in 1628, he argued that blood was simply the most sovereign of the four humors, and he came to look on the Sanguine temperament with special favor. And philosophers of the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries, Bruno in Italy, Hume in Scotland, Voltaire and Rousseau in France, Kant in Germany, took the idea of four humors as a matter of course, as part of the air they breathed.

"19th-century novelists, from Jane Austen and the Brontës to George Eliot and Tolstoy, had these four patterns of human attitude and action clearly in mind when they framed their characters. In War and Peace, for example, Tolstoy divides the members of a lodge of Freemasons into what he described as 'four classes' of character: some looking for social 'connections' and opportunities, some interested in the lodge's 'external form and ceremony,' some seeking a 'fully understood path for themselves,' and some occupied exclusively with 'the scientific secrets of the order.'

"Even some early 20th-century writers demonstrated detailed knowledge of the roots of temperament and character theory. D.H. Lawrence not only saw human nature as organized around 'four poles of dynamic consciousness,' but he actually described a ruddy, sanguine character in his novel Sons and Lovers (1913) as Paracelsus' Salamander," (24-25).

As medicine progressed, though, the rupture the Modern Age sought to establish between it and the traditions of the past affected even Humorism, and it came to be disregarded as a legitimate scientific theory. While a staunch supporter of the central role of tradition in all things, this was, of course, a good thing, as the advances in the physical sciences and anatomy have proven that Humorism, strictly speaking, is false.

Since Galen in AD 190, the medicinal and psychological elements in the traditional theory had remained wedded to one another. It was the balance of the bodily fluids which caused the differences in behavior and personality. As such, when medicine disproved the existence of the humors, it assumed it had also disproved the existence of the temperaments. In essence, they threw the baby out with the bath water:

"In the behavioral sciences what had been the prevailing current of thought for centuries—that temperament determines character—gradually decreased to a tiny trickle in the latter part of the 19th century, owing mainly to the ideas of two men, Sigmund Freud and Ivan Pavlov. Freud reduced mankind to mere animal, nothing more than a creature of blind instinct. Similarly, Pavlov reduced mankind, not to animal, but to machine, its actions nothing more than mechanical response to environmental stimulation. And the 20th century was nearly swept away by these two new theories," (Ibid. 25).

There were some, however, who developed theories of behavior along similar lines to the personalogical elements of Ancient thought. Erich Adickes, working in 1905 without knowledge of the traditional temperaments, "said that mankind could be divided into four 'world views'—Innovative, Traditional, Doctrinaire, and Skeptical," (Ibid.). Adickes' "Innovatives" clearly correspond to Plato's creative and productive Artisans; his "Traditionals" to Plato's duty-, history-, and rule-obsessed Guardians; his "Dogmatics" or "Doctrinaires" to Plato's ethical and harmony-oriented Idealists; and his "Skeptics" or "Agnostics" to Plato's intellectual, theory-minded Rationals.

Not long after Adickes' work, Eduard Spränger "wrote of four 'value attitudes' which distinguish one personality from another—Artistic, Economic, Religious, and Theoretic," (Ibid.) Spränger, like Aristotle before him, was driving at people's motivations, what they seek out and admire. Obviously Artisans value the "aesthetic;" the "economic" is synonymous with the Guardians' "property," as is the "religious" with Idealists' "morality" and the "theoretic" with "rationality."

A few years later Ernst Kretschmer took a slightly different approach and "proposed that both normal and abnormal behavior can be understood in terms of four 'character styles' similar to those of Adickes and Spränger—Hypomanic, Depressive, Hyperesthetic, and Anesthetic," (Ibid.) These four are more obviously correlated to Galen's Temperaments than Plato's, "hypomanic" meaning emotional and excitable, "depression" recalling melancholy, "hyperesthetic" meaning passionate and ambitious, and "anesthetic" meaning generally emotionless and self-content.

"Rudolph Dreikurs, a disciple of Alfred Adler, pointed out in 1947 what he called four 'mistaken goals' which different kinds of people pursue when their self-esteem declines too far for safety—Retaliation, Service, Recognition, and Power. Also in 1947 Eric Fromm, looking at both negative and positive sides of personality, as did Kretschmer, attributed four different 'orientations' to the four styles—Exploitative, Hoarding, Receptive, and Marketing," (Ibid.)

This last group of four "orientations" may seem out of place, but if we consider "exploitation" in terms of a person who sets out to experience as much as possible, seeking sensation, then it starts to sound an awful lot like Aristotle's Hedonics. Likewise, "hoarding" can be thought of as property-acquisition and "reception" as submission of oneself in favor of harmony. According to Fromm, a "marketer" is a person who knows very little of emotion and social matters and so focuses more on a theoretical and strategic understanding of them and less on actually experiencing them, much like a "logical" and "calculating" Rational would do.

We can now add the following additions to the chart:

Next up: Carl Jung reinvents the wheel.

Temperaments And Personality Types, Part Three - Christianity

Given the fact that Galen actually comes after Irenaeus, speaking strictly chronologically, I should have included the following Christian thought in the Classical post. However, seeing as the advent of Christianity is in itself the advent of the Medieval Age (i.e., of the Medieval Synthesis of Classical and Christian thought), it seemed most appropriately included in the previous post, but it ended up running long, so here we are.

Writing about the year 180, St. Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyons says the following concerning the canon of Scripture:

"It is not possible that the Gospels can be either more or fewer in number than they are. For, since there are four zones of the world in which we live, and four principal winds, while the Church is scattered throughout all the world, and the 'pillar and ground' (1 Tim. 3:15) of the Church is the Gospel and the spirit of life; it is fitting that she should have four pillars, breathing out immortality on every side, and vivifying men afresh," (Adversus Haereses III.11.8).

The number four has carried symbolic meaning throughout Western history (as all numbers do). Dino Marcantonio did a fantastic article outlining the significance of the number four and the quincunx in art and architecture. In the chapter entitled "The Numbers Game" in Why Do Catholics Do That?, Dr. Kevin Johnson says this of the number four:

"[The number 4] carries the connotation of...stability.... There are four seasons to a year and, in classical thought, four elements that make up the material universe (fire, water, earth, and air). Four evangelists told the whole story of Christ and everything we need for salvation. The Church divides Advent into four weeks, marked with four candles, because with the coming of Christ the cycle of times is brought to completeness. Sometimes the halo shown on Christ's head contains a four-armed cross, but that's not a reference to the Passion. It means that Christ, uniquely, is a complete being, God as well as a man," (262).

There is a symbolic dimension to the fact that the foundational symbol of our faith is the four-armed cross. In Orthodoxy, G.K. Chesterton compares the fundamental image of Christianity to that of Buddhism, the circle:

"Buddhism is centripetal, but Christianity is centrifugal: it breaks out. For the circle is perfect and infinite in its nature; but it is fixed for ever in its size; it can never be larger or smaller. But the cross, though it has at its heart a collision and a contradiction, can extend its four arms for ever without altering its shape. Because it has a paradox in its centre it can grow without changing. The circle returns upon itself and is bound. The cross opens its arms to the four winds; it is a signpost for free travellers," (50).

A horizontal line (or horizontality itself) refers to the horizon, to the boundary between heaven and earth that humanity can never cross. A vertical line (verticality itself) is symbolic of the path the Sun traces across the Sky, and the direction of the heavenly in general. The Cross is, then, the intersection of the earthly and the heavenly, the union of God and Man in Christ, who, by virtue of his action on the Cross, brings that union to us all. This is why traditionally-designed church buildings always feature two elements most prominently: a long, horizontal path that represents Man's journey to union with God, and lofty heights that represent the descent of God to Man. At "the crossing" the vertical dimension opens out onto a horizontal one, and the two intersect visually at the altar, the tabernacle of the "God with us," which (even from the sky) radiates out in the four cardinal directions, encompassing all there is.

Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome, where the blue line represents the architectural horizon, the
farthest point Man can reach in his long journey to God (the green line), except that God, in his
mercy, has deigned himself to descend to Man in Man's own flesh via the Cross (the red line).

Irenaeus goes on to correlate masterfully the four Gospels with the four Living Creatures of Ezekiel 1 and Revelation 4 as well as to four chief characteristics of Christ himself. The Gospel according to Matthew corresponds to the Man, because it emphasizes Christ's humanity, especially by beginning with his genealogy; Mark corresponds to the Lion, because it emphasizes Christ's divine kingship; Luke corresponds to the Bull, because in it Christ is presented as the servant and the sacrificial offering on behalf of sin; and John corresponds to the Eagle, because its clarity of vision pierces the highest things.

Though not explicit in Irenaeus, these groups of four can be correlated to the four temperaments quite easily. If we compare them in terms of Plato's societal roles, his Guardians are like the Bulls of the community, solemnly bearing the burden for the greater good; Plato's Artisans are the courageous and outgoing (Sanguine) Lions; Plato's Idealists are the passionately ethical, harmony-oriented Men; and Plato's Rationals are the intellectual, head-in-the-clouds Eagles.

Interestingly, though Irenaeus himself doesn't draw the connection between Plato's temperaments and the Four Evangelists, he does adopt Plato's system, giving the four temperaments his own labels, which are more behaviorally and less role-oriented: Artisans he calls "spontaneous;" Guardians, "historical;" Idealists, "spiritual;" and Rationals, "scholarly."

So, we have a few new things to add to our chart:

Stay tuned for the next post in this series which will look at how Modernity dealt with the question of temperament.

Temperaments And Personality Types, Part Two - Medieval Times

When we left off in Part One, Aristotle had just defined our four temperaments in terms of what makes them happy. Subsequently, Humorism and its corresponding Personology was quietly incorporated into the corpus of Western thought. To again quote David Keirsey's account in Please Understand Me II:

"We see Geoffrey Chaucer (in 1380) describing a Doctor of Physic as knowing 'the cause of every malady, And where they were from, and of what humour.' [...] Shakespeare points out dozens of times what he called the 'spirit of humours' in his enormous gallery of characters: a soldier's sanguine appetite or a Countess's sorrowful melancholy a lover's impassioned choler or a physician's phlegmatic detachment. Moreover, Shakespeare's contemporary Ben Jonson developed a whole style of play he called the 'Comedy of Humors,' creating his characters according to a formula he articulated in 1599: 'Some one peculiar quality Doth so possess a man, that it doth draw All his affects, his spirits, and his powers In their confluctions, all to run one way,'" (23-24).

The work of Hippocrates, Plato, Aristotle, and Galen persisted throughout the Middle Ages without any substantive contributions until we come to the Renaissance physician Paracelsus:

"[Paracelsus] proposed four totem spirits which symbolized four personality styles, and which ran parallel to the temperament types of Galen and the character types of Plato. Paracelsus characterized human beings as 'Salamanders,' impulsive and changeable; as 'Gnomes,' industrious and guarded; as 'Nymphs,' inspired and passionate; and as 'Sylphs,' curious and calm," (24).

Paracelsus was kind of a strange fellow, happily intermixing traditonal science and philosophy with the occult and alchemy. But that wasn't really uncommon in those days, as we know from the most famous Renaissance Man, Leonardo da Vinci. Nevertheless, his contribution to the topic at hand is not without merit, adding one more level of clarity to our understanding of the four temperaments. Nodding to Aristotle's "sources of happiness," Paracelsus calls his Sylphs "curious," indicating that they seek knowledge and rational understanding. Likewise he refers to his Gnomes as "industrious," in that they seek material goods. He refers to Plato's intuitive Idealists when he calls his Nymphs "inspired."

Interestingly, though, his Salamanders, which correspond to Plato's Artisans, he calls "changeable," rather than "sensitive" or something of that sort. But isn't that what it means to be sensitive? To allow oneself to conform to the world around oneself? That's part of what makes an artist an artist. He is better able to receive impressions from things in the world, seeing them more clearly and deeply, and thus able to recreate them more completely and beautifully. Likewise, by choosing Slyphs (which are similar to Angels) to represent Rationals, more than referring to their rationalistic and logical tendencies, he has indicated that they are more spiritual and abstract, more "head in the clouds" in general, than other types.

While not explicit in Keirsey's works, a correlation can also be seen in the four Feudal Castes. Plato's Guardians becoming the Peasant/Soldier class, Artisans becoming the Merchant/Craftsman class, Idealists corresponding to the Clergy, and Rationals to the Nobility, seeing as they were the only ones with access to education and the ones Plato wanted to run the kingdom. Maybe the Medieval World would have fared better in the long run had its leaders actually been intelligent philosopher-kings. Of course, these castes likewise correspond to the four French suits of cards that originated in the Middle Ages and the numbers 1 through 4.

Even more interestingly, though not traditional as far as the West is concerned, the Middle Ages in India saw the rise of the Bhakti movement, which emphasized a personal and loving God and required our reciprocal devotion and service. The Bhakti movement distinguished four "yogas," or paths of salvation, that one can follow in order to devote oneself rightly to God, and which correspond well with the four temperaments we've been outlining.

Combine everything we've looked at so far and we can put together a new chart:

Next up: What Christianity has to say on the topic.

Temperaments And Personality Types, Part One - The Ancients

In the middle of the last century, Isabel Briggs Myers and her mother Katherine Briggs dusted off a copy of Carl Jung's 1923 work Psychological Types and began developing a questionnaire based on it designed to "sort" people into one of sixteen possible personality types called the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. Neither the work of Mrs. Myers nor Carl Jung was particularly revolutionary, however. They stand at the near end of a long tradition of personality "sorting" that can be traced back to the beginning of Western Civilization. This post will be the first in a short series tracing the development of that tradition.

In his book Please Understand Me II, David Keirsey recounts the early history of "personology" thusly:

"It was the Roman physician Galen who, developing the ideas of Hippocrates, proposed (around 190 AD) that it is neither the stars nor the gods that determine what we want and what we do; rather, it is the balance of our bodily fluids, the four 'humors,' as they were called. If our blood predominates Galen called us 'Sanguine' or eagerly optimistic in temperament; if our black bile or gall predominates, then we are 'Melancholic' or doleful in temperament; if our yellow bile predominates, then we are 'Choleric' or passionate in temperament; and if our phlegm predominates, then we are 'Phlegmatic' or calm in temperament," (23).

An artist's unflattering rendition of the Four Temperaments.

Of course, we all know how the application of Galen's theory of Humorism worked out when applied medicinally. Nevertheless, it seems clear that the personological element has merit, technically unrelated to bodily fluids as it may be. If you think about it, it's probably pretty easy to sort everybody you know into one of Galen's four temperaments. Try replacing his terms with some more familiar ones: "Sanguine" with "cheerful," "Melancholic" with "broody," "Choleric" with "excitable," and "Phlegmatic" with "calm."

"Nearly six hundred years before Galen, Plato had written in The Republic of four kinds of character which clearly corresponded with the four temperaments attributed to Hippocrates. Plato was more interested in the individual's contribution to the social order than in underlying temperament, and so he named the Sanguine temperament the iconic (artisan) character, endowed with artistic sense, and playing an art-making role in society. He named the Melancholic temperament the pistic (guardian) character, endowed with common sense, and playing a caretaking role in society. He named the Choleric temperament the noetic (idealist) character, endowed with intuitive sensibility, and playing a moral role in society. And he named the Phlegmatic temperament the dianoetic (rational) character, endowed with reasoning ability, and laying the role of logical investigator in society," (Ibid.).

The Greek words Plato has used here to identify the driving forces behind Hippocrates' four temperaments can be translated as follows: icon = "image", pistis = "trust", noein = "insight", and dianoia = "reason". In other words, if you're Sanguine, you're driven by imagery (iconography) and will likely be drawn to the arts, crafts (such as carpentry or masonry), and creativity in general; if you're Melancholic, you're driven by honor, duty, and trust in others and society, and you'll likely be drawn to traditional leadership (guardian) roles; if you're Choleric, you're driven by intuition and insight and will likely be drawn to activities involving ethics, relationships, and establishing harmony; and if you're Phlegmatic, you're driven by cold and calm reason, and you'll likely be drawn to logical, mathematical fields.

"A generation [after Plato], Aristotle defined character in terms of happiness, and not, as his mentor Plato had done, in terms of virtue. Aristotle argued that there are four sources of happiness: 'The mass of men,' he said, find happiness either in 'sensual pleasure' (hedone) or in 'acquiring assets' (propraietari), while some few find happiness either in exercising their 'moral virtue' (ethikos) or in a life of 'logical investigation' (dialogike)," (Ibid.).

 Not surprisingly, the categories we have thus far established (humors, temperaments, drives, societal roles, sources of happiness) were eventually seen as corresponding to other groups of four like the seasons, the major organs, and the four elements. After a brief survey of the Classical temperaments, then, we end up with the following chart:

Next up: the Medieval World's contributions.