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1.3 DEFINITIONS OF PERSONALITY 15

Hippocrates’ ideas were taken up by the physician and philosopher, Galen, who expanded them into ideas of personality we more readily recognize today. Galen suggested that both diseases and personality differ ences could be explained by an imbalance of the four humours. His theory contended that an excess of these various bodily humours, or fluids, led to the definite temperament types . Galen codified the relationships between bodily humours and temperament in the fol lowing way: • Blood—the sanguine (cheerful) type. • Yellow bile—the choleric (ambitious) type. • Black bile—the melancholic (neurotic) type. • Phlegm—the phlegmatic (calm) type. According to this theory, it was said that someone with an excess of blood would have a sanguine tem perament and be joyful, eager, optimistic, enthusiastic, and excitable. Someone with too much yellow bile (se creted by the liver) would have a choleric temperament and be passionate, ambitious, and bold and prone to anger and irritability. Someone with too much black bile (dark blood perhaps mixed with other secretions) would have a melancholic temperament and be re served, anxious, and unhappy. In contrast, someone with an abundance of phlegm (secreted in the respi ratory passage) would be calm, reliable, thoughtful, stolid, apathetic, and undemonstrative (Stelmack & Stalikas, 1991). Galen’s theory was impressive, not least in terms of its persistence for more than 1,000 years—it was pop ular well into the Middle Ages. Galen’s theory is illus trated in Figure 1.2, where it is related to the earlier view on temperament. Galen’s theory contains a number of interesting spec ulations that inform current-day personality theory: 1. There exist different types of people. 2. Personality is caused by bodily functions. 3. Personality can be observed and, to some extent, measured. Of course, during Galen’s time, very little was known about the various types of personality and what pre cisely gave rise to them. Yet, they were, and still are, very appealing—we even use expressions from the

Black Bile (Melancholic)

1

Earth

Dry

Wet

Sputum (Phlegm)

Yellow Bile (Choleric)

Water

Fire

Air

Cold

Hot

Blood (Sanguine)

theory in everyday life (e.g. the liver-related ‘jaun diced’ view of life of the yellow bile person).We see the influence of this theory in classic literary works (e.g. Chaucer and Shakespeare) when portraying charac ters, and philosophers (e.g. Locke and Descartes) have speculated on the nature of the types they observed. We take up the issue of categorical ‘types’ in Chapter 6 where we contrast them with continuous‘ dimensions ’, which are now much more prevalent in modern-day personality psychology. The theory that bodily chemistry determines temperament has survived for more than 2,500 years and is still very popular today, although in a different form. According to this theory, emotional stability, as well as overall health, depends on an appropriate balance between these four bodily hu mours. An excess of any one of these humours can lead to illness or exaggerated personality traits. This theoretical position is one of the first to assume that there is a continuum between ‘normal’ variations in personality and disease, both physical and mental. These were, indeed, revolutionary ideas, and al though the specific details, not unsurprisingly, have not stood the test of scientific time, the basic notion that bodily processes (i.e. central nervous system) influence personality are reflected in personality the ories that include body chemistry: hormones, neu rotransmitters, and substances such as endorphins. FIGURE 1.2 Galen’s typology. This depiction links together all of the ideas of Empedocles, Hippocrates, and Galen in their humoral theory of temperament. Credit: Adapted from Stelmack and Stalikas (1991). Copyright © 1991 Published by Elsevier Ltd.

© Oxford University Press

© Oxford University Press