Temperament. Character

TEMPERAMENT. CHARACTER

• Concept of Temperament.
• Theories of Temperament.
• Temperament Characteristics.
• Types of Temperament.
• Concept of Character.

Temperament

The word "temperament“ comes from Latin "temperare", "to mix".
- individual differences in human motivation and emotion that appear early in life, usually thought to be biological in origin. Temperament is sometimes considered the biological or physiological component of personality, which refers to the sum total of the physical, emotional, mental, spiritual, and social dimensions of an individual.

2. Theories of Temperament

Hippocrates (460 BC – 370 BC)

divided humanity into four basic

temperaments, around the

year 460 BC. Hippocrates saw

the root of one's temperament

as being derived from the humours

dominant in the body: blood (sanguine), bile from the liver (choleric), phlegm (phlegmatic), and bile from the kidneys (melancholic).

Esoteric view

A corresponding view, popular amongst the ancient astrologers and philosophers, would class individuals according to the elements of the natural order: respectively, air, fire, water, and earth.

The ancient theory survives in the

form of such expressions as "being

in a bad (or good) humor."

Humorism

Galen of Pergamon (129 – 199/217)

advanced Hippocrates’ theory,

creating a typology of human

temperaments.

Humorism asserts that each person is born with a basic temperament as determined by which of the four humors tends to predominate in the individual.
Hippocrates’ and Galen’s views
based so-called theory of humorism.

Kretschmer’s theory of temperament

Ernst Kretschmer (1888 —1964)

German psychiatrist.