Temperamentally Yours…

When I was about 18, my library-addicted mother brought home yet another self-help book “for the family”. A collective groan went up. We were weary of her self-help experiments in “fixing us” over the years, the worst offender an ill-advised episode of tough-love-gone-wrong involving chicken wire and duct tape. (Don’t ask. Trust me!)

The new book was about personality types, or more properly, temperament types. Each type was named rather grossly according to the four ancient body humours of early Western Medicine: Sanguine (blood), Choleric (yellow bile), Melancholy (black bile) and Phlegmatic (phlegm. eww). Worse, it promised to help strengthen family relationships, when at 18, I was far more interested in severing them.

But somehow, we all (including my then-boyfriend/now-spouse) wound up reading the book out loud, taking the test, helping each other to figure out their temperament type and laughing… especially at my Choleric Mother, who true to form, declared they could not possibly be right. Couldn’t we see she was *clearly* the peaceful, unruffled and calm type, DAMMIT?! (she still doesn’t see the irony of her statement )

When I stopped laughing…

The experience provided me with important insights about people in general:

1. Some personality (or more properly, temperament) traits are hardwired, present at birth, and likely inherited.
2. People are really, REALLY different, and not always in control of those differences. (That may seem obvious now, but at 18, I really thought people should be able to force themselves to change.)
3. We all have different, deep seated motivations for our actions.
4. We all have different comfort levels when it comes to social activity, affection, and our need for control.
5. We can’t change the way we experience those core needs and motivations, but…
6. We can change how we express and meet those needs.

I also gained a lot of insight into myself and my family - including why I’d spent most of my life hiding from a very argumentative family. (They all had strong Choleric/Bossy streaks and clashed horribly, while I had almost none of that urge to control, and just wanted to have fun, true to the Sanguine type.)

Almost But Not Quite

But as much as I gained from the system, something never quite seemed to fit. I did have a happy-go-lucky streak of Sanguine (which is where I tested the strongest). None of the other types seemed right, but Sanguine alone didn’t seem to explain some of my most instinctive reactions.

It would be over 20 years before I’d be wandering Reg Adkin’s blog (Elemental Truths) and find a mention of an additional type, the Supine (duly credited to Drs Phyllis and Richard Arno). Combined with my Sanguine streak, Supine filled in the blanks for me quite nicely, and my interest in the system was renewed.

Unfortunately, there is currently no good online test for all 5 temperaments (though a Google search will lead you to many tests for the original 4 temperaments) Reg does, I believe, have one in development, and if MindTweaks readers show a strong interest, we might be able to encourage a speedier development

Meanwhile, most people can pretty well guess at their type from the basic descriptions. I’ll be posting an overview later on tonight, or you can check out the one on Elemental Truths: An Overview of Temperaments

But First…

A few cautions, if you go out on the web looking for more information. The modern system of Temperaments has been primarily developed and promoted by Christian counselors, so some of the sites you’ll find will be written from that perspective. If one site seems too religious for you, just skip to the next. The system itself is not dependant on religion.

You’ll also find some odd criticisms of the system, some of them even comparing it to astrology(!?) It’s silliness, if you ask me… just because the types are named after ancient body fluids doesn’t mean anyone really believes that your temperament is based on how much blood vs bile your body produces

And don’t be confused by the different definitions of personality and temperament that you may run across. For the purposes of this system, “temperament” refers to ingrained, inborn traits, while “personality” refers to how you express yourself according to the situation.

Why am I posting about this now?

Remember that business a few weeks ago about how how much I suck at modern social media? In the comments on that post, there was some speculation about how personalities and temperaments affect how satisfied we are with current social media offerings. Reg invited me to do a joint project on the subject, starting next week - but first, I needed to introduce the concept of temperaments here, and offering up my own history seemed an appropriately quirky introduction.

And if you’re wondering about me, I seem to be a combination of Sanguine and Supine, meaning (among other things) that I have a simultaneous need to stand in the spotlight, and a desire to be lost in the crowd - a need to appear humble, and a need for huge amounts of personal recognition. In other words? my neuroticism comes quite naturally

For more information on Temperament types,
Check out Elemental Truths