History Of Temperament

History of Temperament
Throughout the ages, observers of human behavior have repeatedly identified major patterns or configurations of behavior. Such holistic sorting of behavior patterns has beenrecorded for at least twenty-five centuries.
In 450 b.c., Hippocrates described four dispositions he called temperaments—a choleric temperament with an ease of emotional arousal and sensitivity; aphlegmatic temperament with cool detachment and impassivity; a melancholic temperament with a very serious, dour, and downcast nature; and a sanguine temperament full of impulsivity, excitability, andquick reactivity. During the Middle Ages, Philippus Paracelsus described four natures whose behaviors were said to be influenced by four kinds of spirits: nymphs, sylphs, gnomes, and salamanders.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 thatmotivation 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 directionsof 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 formerdirectional 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 ismost highly developed: thinking, feeling, sensation, or intuition.
A major breakthrough in typology came in 1942 with the emergence of the Myers Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI). Isabelle Myers and...