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Four temperaments
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== History == Temperament theory has its roots in the ancient theory of [[humourism]]. It may have originated in [[Mesopotamia]],<ref>{{Cite book|last=Sudhoff|first=Karl|author-link=Karl Sudhoff|title=Essays in the History of Medicine|pages=67, 87, 104|year=1926|publisher=Medical Life Press, [[New York City|New York]]}}</ref> but it was Greek physician [[Hippocrates]] (460β370 BC) (and later [[Galen]]) who developed it into a medical theory. He believed that certain human moods, emotions, and behaviours were caused by an excess or lack of body fluids (called "humours"), which he classified as blood, yellow bile, black bile, and phlegm,<ref name=":1" /> each of which was responsible for different patterns in personalities, as well as how susceptible one was to getting a disease. [[Galen]] (AD 129 β c. 200) developed the first typology of temperament in his dissertation ''De temperamentis'', and searched for physiological reasons for different behaviours in humans. He classified them as ''hot/cold'' and ''dry/wet'' taken from the [[Classical element|four elements]].<ref name="Boeree">{{cite web|last=Boeree|first=C. George|title=Early Medicine and Physiology|url=http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/neurophysio.html|access-date=21 February 2013}}</ref> There could also be [[Balance (metaphysics)|balance]] between the qualities, yielding a total of nine temperaments. The word "temperament" itself comes from Latin "''temperare''", "to mix". In the ideal personality, the complementary characteristics were exquisitely balanced among warm-cool and dry-moist. In four less-ideal types, one of the four qualities was dominant over all the others. In the remaining four types, one pair of qualities dominated the complementary pair; for example, warm and moist dominated cool and dry. These last four were the temperamental categories which Galen named "sanguine", "choleric", "melancholic", and "phlegmatic" after the bodily humours. Each was the result of an excess of one of the humours which produced the imbalance in paired qualities.<ref name=":1" /><ref name=Kagan>{{Cite book|first=Jerome|last=Kagan|year=1998|title=Galen's Prophecy: Temperament In Human Nature|publisher=New York: Basic Books|isbn=0-465-08405-2|url=https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780465084050}}</ref><ref>{{cite news|last=Osborn L. Ac.|first=David K.|title=Inherent Temperament|url=http://www.greekmedicine.net/b_p/Inherent_Temperament.html|access-date=21 February 2013}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |url=http://sun2.science.wayne.edu/~tpartrid/Manuscripts/HEETemperament1.25.02.doc |title=Temperament: Developmental and Ecological Dimensions |access-date=2010-03-26 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110720112637/http://sun2.science.wayne.edu/~tpartrid/Manuscripts/HEETemperament1.25.02.doc |archive-date=2011-07-20 |url-status=dead }}</ref> For example, if a person tends to be too happy or "sanguine", one can assume they have too much blood in proportion to the other humours, and can medically act accordingly. Likewise for being too calm and reserved or "phlegmatic" from too much phlegm; excessively sad or "melancholic" from too much black bile; and too angry or "choleric" from excess yellow bile.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Judy Duchan's History of Speech β Language Pathology |url=https://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~duchan/new_history/ancient_history/humor_theory.html#:~:text=A%20melancholic%20temperament%20comes%20from,with%20an%20excess%20of%20phlegm. |access-date=2023-03-30 |website=www.acsu.buffalo.edu}}</ref> The properties of these humours also corresponded to the four seasons. Thus blood, which was considered hot and wet, corresponded to spring. Yellow bile, considered hot and dry, corresponded to summer. Black bile, cold and dry, corresponded to autumn. And finally, phlegm, cold and wet, corresponded to winter.<ref name=":2">{{Citation|last=Jouanna|first=Jacques|title=The Legacy of the Hippocratic Treatise The Nature of Man: The Theory of the Four Humours|date=2012|work=Greek Medicine from Hippocrates to Galen|pages=335β359|publisher=Brill|doi=10.1163/9789004232549_017 |isbn=9789004232549 |s2cid=171176381 |doi-access=free}}</ref> These properties were considered the basis of health and disease. This meant that having a balance and good mixture of the humours defined good health, while an imbalance or separation of the humours led to disease.<ref name=":2" /> Because the humours corresponded to certain seasons, one way to avoid an imbalance or disease was to change health-related habits depending on the season. Some physicians did this by regulating a patient's diet, while some used remedies such as [[phlebotomy]] and purges to get rid of excess blood. Even Galen proposed a theory of the importance of proper digestion in forming healthy blood. The idea was that the two most important factors when digesting are the types of food and the person's body temperature. This meant that if too much heat were involved, then the blood would become "overcooked." This meant that it would contain too much of the yellow bile, and the patient would become feverish.<ref name=":3">{{Cite journal|last=Ayoub|first=Lois|date=1995|title=Old English WΓ¦ta and the Medical Theory of the Humours|url=http://www.jstor.org/stable/27711180|journal=The Journal of English and Germanic Philology|volume=94 |issue=3 |pages=332β346|jstor=27711180 }}</ref> Lack of sufficient heat was believed to result in an excess of phlegm. [[File:Charles Le Brun-Grande Commande-Les Quatre temperaments.jpg|thumb|Choleric, sanguine, melancholic, and phlegmatic temperaments: 17c., part of the [[Grande Commande]]]] Persian<ref> * {{harvnb|Corbin|2016|loc=[https://press.princeton.edu/titles/2761.html Overview]}}. "In this work a distinguished scholar of Islamic religion examines the mysticism and psychological thought of the great eleventh-century Persian philosopher and physician Avicenna (Ibn Sina), author of over a hundred works on theology, logic, medicine, and mathematics." * {{harvnb|Pasnau|Dyke|2010|p=52}}. "Most important of these initially was the massive Book of Healing (Al-Shifa) of the eleventh-century Persian Avicenna, the parts of which labeled in Latin as De anima and De generatione having been translated in the second half of the twelfth century." * {{harvnb|Daly|2013|p=[https://books.google.com/books?id=9aZPAQAAQBAJ&q=Ibn+Sina+Persian+polymath&pg=PA18 18]}}. "The Persian polymath Ibn Sina (981β1037) consolidated all of this learning, along with Ancient Greek and Indian knowledge, into his The Canon of Medicine (1025), a work still taught in European medical schools in the seventeenth century."</ref> polymath [[Avicenna]] (980β1037 AD) extended the theory of temperaments in his ''[[The Canon of Medicine|Canon of Medicine]]'', which was a standard medical text at many medieval universities. He applied them to "emotional aspects, mental capacity, moral attitudes, self-awareness, movements and dreams."<ref name=Lutz>{{Cite book|first=Peter L.|last=Lutz|year=2002|title=The Rise of Experimental Biology: An Illustrated History|page=60|publisher=Humana Press|isbn=0-89603-835-1}}</ref> [[Nicholas Culpeper]] (1616β1654) suggested that the humors acted as governing principles in bodily health, with astrological correspondences,<ref>Nicholas Culpeper (1653) [http://www.skyscript.co.uk/astrodiscourse.html ''An Astrologo-Physical Discourse of the Human Virtues in the Body of Man''], transcribed and annotated by Deborah Houlding. Skyscript, 2009 (retrieved 16 November 2011). Originally published in Culpeper's ''Complete Herbal'' (English Physician). London: Peter Cole, 1652.</ref> and explained their influence upon physiognomy and personality.<ref>Nicholas Culpeper, ''Semeiotica Urania, or Astrological Judgement of Diseases''. London: 1655. Reprint, Nottingham: Ascella, 1994.</ref> He proposed that some people had a single temperament, while others had an admixture of two, a primary and secondary temperament.<ref>{{cite book|last=Greenbaum|first=Dorian Gieseler|title=Temperament: Astrology's Forgotten Key|year=2005|publisher=Wessex Astrologer|isbn=1-902405-17-X|pages=42, 91}}</ref> Modern medical science has rejected the theories of the four temperaments, though their use persists as a metaphor within certain psychological fields.<ref>{{cite journal|doi=10.1037/0022-3514.55.5.836|title=Metaphorical equivalence of elements and temperaments: Empirical studies of Bachelard's theory of imagination|year=1988|last1=Martindale|first1=Anne E.|author2-link=Colin Martindale|last2=Martindale|first2=Colin|journal=Journal of Personality and Social Psychology|volume=55|issue=5|pages=836}}</ref> [[Immanuel Kant]] (1724β1804), [[Erich Adickes]] (1866β1925), [[Alfred Adler]] (1879β1937), [[Eduard Spranger]] (1914), [[Ernst Kretschmer]] (1920), and [[Erich Fromm]] (1947) all theorised on the four temperaments (with different names) and greatly shaped modern theories of temperament. [[Hans Eysenck]] (1916β1997) was one of the first psychologists to analyse personality differences using a psycho-statistical method called [[factor analysis]], and his research led him to believe that temperament is biologically based. The factors that he proposed in his book ''Dimensions of Personality'' were [[neuroticism]] (N), the tendency to experience [[negative emotion]]s, and [[extraversion]] (E), the tendency to enjoy positive events, especially social ones. By pairing the two dimensions, Eysenck noted how the results were similar to the four ancient temperaments.{{Citation needed|date=October 2020}} In the field of physiology, [[Ivan Pavlov]] studied on the [[Ivan Pavlov#Research on types and properties of nervous systems|types and properties of the nervous system]], where three main properties were identified: strength, mobility of nervous processes and balance between excitation and inhibition, and derived four types based on these three properties.<ref>Rokhin, L, Pavlov, I and Popov, Y. (1963), ''Psychopathology and Psychiatry'', Foreign Languages Publication House: Moscow. [https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.185366/mode/2up]</ref> Other researchers developed similar systems, many of which did not use the ancient temperament names, and several paired extraversion with a different factor which would determine relationship and task-orientation. Examples are [[DISC assessment]] and social styles. One of the most popular today is the [[Keirsey Temperament Sorter]], attributed to the work of David Keirsey, whose four temperaments were based largely on the Greek gods [[Apollo]], [[Dionysus]], [[Epimetheus (mythology)|Epimetheus]], and [[Prometheus]], and were mapped to the 16 types of the [[MyersβBriggs Type Indicator]] (MBTI). They were renamed as [[Artisan temperament|Artisan]] (SP), [[Guardian temperament|Guardian]] (SJ), [[Idealist temperament|Idealist]] (NF), and [[Rational temperament|Rational]] (NT).<ref>{{Cite book |last=Becerra |first=Jose |url=https://bookdown.org/becerra_je/7-Rays/keirseys-personality-types.html |title=Chapter 3 Keirsey's personality types {{!}} The Bailey Seven Ray Types}}</ref> C.G. Jung's ''Psychological Types'' surveys the historical literature of the 'four humors' and related discussions extensively and in depth and proposes a psychoanalytic integration of the material. {| class="wikitable" |+ Relation of various four temperament theories ! Classical !! Element<ref name="Boeree"/> !! Adler<ref>{{cite book|last=Lundin|first=Robert W.|title=Alfred-Adler's Basic Concepts and Implications|year=1989|publisher=Taylor and Francis|isbn=0-915202-83-2|page=[https://archive.org/details/alfredadlersbasi0000lund/page/54 54]|url=https://archive.org/details/alfredadlersbasi0000lund/page/54}}</ref> !! Riemann<ref>{{cite book|last=Riemann|first=Fritz|title=Anxiety|year=2008|publisher=Reinhardt Ernst|isbn=978-3-497-02043-0|url=https://www.scribd.com/document/393706085/Fritz-Riemann-Anxiety-Die-4-Grundformen-der-Ang-b-ok-org-pdf}}</ref> !! DISC<ref>{{Cite web|date=2014-01-27|title=What Are the Four DISC Types?|url=https://discpersonalitytesting.com/blog/what-are-the-four-disc-types/|access-date=2020-09-22|website=DISC Personality Testing Blog|language=en-US}}</ref> (Different publishers use different names) ! Physical manifestation ! Source |- | Melancholic ||Earth|| Leaning || Depressed || Steadiness/Supportive || Black bile || Spleen |- | Phlegmatic ||Water|| Avoiding || Schizoid || Conscientiousness/Cautious || Phlegm || Lungs |- | Sanguine || Air || Socially Useful || Hysterical || Influence/Inspiring || Blood || Marrow |- | Choleric || Fire || Ruling|| Obsessive || Dominance/Direct || Yellow bile || Liver/Gall Bladder |}
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