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Hippocrates' ideas were amplified by Galen (A.D.129-200), the Greek physician and philosopher. Galen, who lived most of his life in Rome, was drawn to Asclepius, the God of healing, and he felt convinced that the differences of temperament were positive rather than negative.
Many years later, the Swiss born renaissance healer Paracelsus (1493-1541) travelled around Europe seeking to expand his medical and healing knowledge. He earned his living as a physician and writer, and continued to build on Hippocrates' idea of the four temperaments with his work "Nymphs, Gnomes, Sylphs and Salamanders".
Since the turn of the century there has been increasing interest into the nature of personality, particularly in Europe and the United States. A number of scholars have carried on with classifying human nature into four temperaments, making minor adjustments but all keeping to the four basic groups. Three of these - Erich Adickes, Eduard Spranger and Ernst Kretschmer - were German. Erich Adickes renamed the temperaments as Dogmatic, Agnostic, Traditional and Novative, and Eduard Spranger (1920) called them Religious, Theoretic, Economic and Aesthetic. The psychiatrist Ernst Kretschmer named the temperaments Hyperesthetic, Anesthetic, Depressive and Manic. And Erich Fromm (1947), who was from a Jewish-German family, named the temperaments Receptive, Marketing, Hoarding and Exploiting (1947).
However, the Swiss psychiatrist, Carl Jung, known for his immense body of work on the mind's mental processes, broke away from the four temperaments. Jung (1923) proposed that an individual's behaviour is not arbitrary or random, but has a pattern to it. This pattern is governed by the person's choice or preference for specific ways of functioning and living. Jung's theory broke new ground, as he suggested that each preference is chosen from a pair of opposites, and this is why people have different - and indeed conflicting - needs, drives, desires, values and aims. Jung suggested that our pattern shows itself in the way we respond to the world around us. We will look at his theory in more detail shortly.
Development
Meanwhile, in the U.S.A., Katharine Briggs, who had become fascinated by observing the variety of personality characteristics around her, had begun collecting her own data. When she read a translation of Jung's Psychological Types she found his ideas to be consistent with her own, and this encouraged her to keep on with her observations and research. During the next twenty years she continued to pursue her own ideas, which were so close to those of Jung, and her dedication and enthusiasm communicated itself to her daughter, Isabel Myers. By 1942 Isabel, too, had became totally engrossed in the work which Jung and her mother had started. With support from Katharine, Isabel Myers began developing a series of sample questions, which she tried out on groups of people, beginning with groups with which she was familiar and in which she was confident of their preferences. For the next fourteen years Myers sorted, analysed and validated many thousands of answers.
By 1956 Myers was ready to publish her questionnaire, the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, and with some reluctance, the Educational Testing Service in New Jersey published it. It was not until 1962, when Myers published a manual on her research, that the work gained support and started to be used by a wider public, and Consulting Psychologists Press took over the publishing of the Indicator in 1975. Since 1962 an enormous body of research based on Jung's and Myers's original ideas has been undertaken, and this is held at the Center for the Application of Psychological Type in Gainesville, Florida. Myers also published her reflections on the history of the Type Indicator (Myers. 1973) and a short introduction to type differences (Myers. 1980a), which was later expanded into Gifts Differing, a deeper explanation of type as experienced in a variety of settings (Myers. 1980b).
Myers's research and questionnaire have become the greatest used material and questionnaire in the world. Her original research, which has now been added to by many people, is being used in over 40 countries throughout the world, and analysis suggests that personality type and temperament transcend culture and language. Industry, education, the helping and therapeutic professions, as well as individuals, are finding the material helps them appreciate their personal strengths as well as appreciating the strengths of those around them. A number of educational publications have been produced in the U.S.A. which have looked at a variety of ways of using type to improve learning for pupils, and teaching styles for teachers. These include ways of doing better in school and college, (Provost and Anchors. 1987), methods of planning lessons and assessments to suit different types, and understanding how the development of a child is affected by their type (Murphy. 1992).
Jung's theory of Psychological Types
Jung's theory tells us that when we observe people in numbers human behaviour shows immense diversity and little sense of order, but when we observe individuals we see an identifiable pattern. In other words, human behaviour as a whole may appear inconsistent and illogical, but an individual's behaviour has some consistency and logic to it.
A brief look at the model, which is based on four pairs of opposite characteristics, is given below, and this tells us there are no good or bad preferences, just different ones. When we make a choice between two options we choose the preference we feel most comfortable with, and these choices give us our strongest and most positive characteristics. Our four preferences make up our personality pattern or type - there are 16 - and many people find they can recognise their own type even before doing the questionnaire.
The first pair concern our attitude to the world around us and how we renew our energy. We call these attitudes Extraversion and Introversion. Extraverts renew their energy from interaction with people and things from the outside world. They tend to be talkative and outgoing, they act quickly and like to meet and work with other people. They feel lonely when they have to spend long periods of time on their own. Introverts are quite different. They tend to be quieter and more reserved, and they renew their energy from within; they are slower to act and need more time on their own to think and reflect. Introverts find they are drained of energy when they have to be with people for long periods. Myers's research reports 75% of people preferring Extraversion, with 25% preferring Introversion, giving three times as many Extraverts as Introverts. My experience in this country is that we can expect a slightly higher number of Introverts, say twice as many Extraverts as Introverts.
The second pair focus on how we take in information from our surroundings and where we focus our attention. We call these processes Sensing and Intuition. People who prefer absorbing information through the Sensing process use their eyes, ears, nose, mouth and skin - the five senses - to do this. They notice details, facts and specific parts, and tend to be practical. They live in the present and tackle work a step at a time. Intuitive people are somewhat of a mystery to them, as Intuitives absorb information through their senses too, but they immediately make links, patterns and relationships with the information, and their minds rove freely around as they do this. Intuitives tend to do things in their own way, and they are creative and inventive people, sometimes unaware of practical details. We can see how down-to-earth and literal people find more dreamy and impractical types annoying, and how creative people can be frustrated by those who cannot follow their ideas and concepts. This pair are of the greatest importance in learning, as Sensing types and Intuitive types absorb information in dissimilar ways. Sensing types need information presented step-by-step in order for them to build up to the whole, while Intuitive types need an overview of the "whole picture" into which they can then fit the different bits and pieces. Myers's research reports 75% of people preferring Sensing, with 25% preferring Intuition.
After taking in information we go on to make decisions about how to act on this information. We call this third process Thinking and Feeling. Those who prefer the Thinking process like to be rational, logical and analytical. They decide with their heads rather than their hearts and can judge situations from an outsiders's viewpoint. They see inconsistencies and flaws easily. Those who prefer the Feeling process like to be more personal and subjective. They decide with their hearts rather than their heads and are concerned for harmonious human relationships. Feeling types tend to put people first and they may not notice flaws and inconsistencies. It is harder for them to judge situations from outside as frequently they feel part of the situation. Both points of view can be seen and understood, but decisions made with the head and those made with the heart can conflict. Myers reports equal numbers of people preferring Thinking and Feeling, but she also reports that "The proportion of Feeling types appears to be substantially higher among women than among men." (Myers, 1980b)
The last pair can cause some of the greatest frustrations between people, whether this is in work situations, families, schools or social life. This pair is called Judging and Perceiving. Are we someone who is happier when we can plan ahead and get things settled, or someone who prefers to wait and see what happens so we can be more flexible and spontaneous? Those who prefer the Judging process like a more planned and orderly lifestyle and like to work to deadlines. They tend to be well organised and in control of their lives. Those who prefer the Perceiving process like to be open to what life offers. They like to put off decisions in order to collect more information, and may leave their arrangements to the last minute. Perceivers go with the flow of life and prefer to work when they feel like it. This pair can cause tensions between those who feel some urgency to complete and finish tasks - the Judging process - and those who want to delay action in order to keep things open for new information - the Perceiving process. Myers reports about equal numbers of people preferring Judging and Perceiving. It is not difficult to see that these opposing attitudes to life, and especially to work, can provoke anger and frustration.
As we would expect from reading the above, research data held at the Center for Applications of Psychological Type show the distribution of type in different professions to be weighted according to the type of work. For example, we find that work which requires dealing with the public draws the Extravert and Feeling types, research work draws the Introverts and Intuitives, work which has no contact with the public draws the Introverts and Thinkers, and changeable and open-ended work draws the Perceivers.
Research Project
This material also gives us some certainty in predicting which types might be dominant in specific groups of people. This can be seen in a research project I carried out in two stages with members of MENSA. MENSA, the society for those with a high IQ, requires members to sit a test for entry. This test is not based on a knowledge of facts, but on abstract reasoning - mainly the ability to explain, understand and differentiate language, and to solve mathematical and visual puzzles. A person with immense factual and general knowledge might score very low in this test. Equally, a person with poor factual and general knowledge could gain high scores. If we look at this in relation to our Sensing and Intuitive preferences we would predict that the proportion of three or four Sensing types to one Intuitive in the general population is likely to be different here, and we would expect to find many more Intuitives.
And this is how it turned out. Members were, in both stages of the research, asked to respond to my personality questionnaire. The questionnaire went out first in 1991, and again in 1996. In all nearly 3000 members responded, and the results at both stages were consistent with expectations. In 1991 57% of members reported preferring Intuition, as opposed to the expected 20-25% in the general population, and in 1996 the percentage was 58%. (Hedges. 1990/1997) Both times the number of Intuitives was more than double that in the general population, which is what we would expect from people who had been successful in a test based on abstract reasoning.
More Recent Development
Since 1955 the American psychologist, Professor David Keirsey, has based his research on Jung's theory and the data collected by Briggs and Myers. He published his Temperament Theory (Keirsey, 1978), which not only uses the 16 types but also demonstrates how these fit neatly into four temperaments. His research demonstrates how the four temperaments suggested by Hippocrates can be traced through the ages to Carl Jung and on to Keirseian Temperament theory (1987).
Temperament is of particular help to teachers in school, as working with 16 types is highly complex, but working with four temperaments is a practical possibility. Keirsey's Temperament Theory is now used as a model for human behaviour throughout the world in industry, social work, education, counselling and the Church; the Temperament Research Institute is based in California.
Professor Keith Golay, a trainer of school psychologists, school counsellors and child therapists explains, "Temperament is primary, and predisposes the person to certain ways of thinking, wanting, emoting and acting. Thus, each of the personality styles has its own way of learning, its own way of being motivated, its own way of relating with others, and its own way of being satisfied" (Golay,1982).
Keirseian theory is many centuries in time from Hippocrates' original ideas, and it is much more specific in what it tells us; but Keirseian theory goes back to the greeks to make metaphorical use of four of the greek gods to represent the temperaments. These are Apollo, Prometheus, Epimetheus and Dionysus. Apollo represents man's sense of spirit, Prometheus man's knowledge of science, Epimetheus man's sense of duty and Dionysus man's sense of freedom and joy. As can be seen in Table 1, each temperament incorporates four of the types, and the importance of this in education is that the temperaments have four recognisably different styles of both teaching and learning.
TABLE 1.
TEMPERAMENT STYLES SHOWING THE GROUPING OF THE 16 TYPES
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