Temperament

World Of Forms

What is temperament?According to Oxford advanced Learners English
Dictionary,Temperament is'A persons or an Animals nature as shown in
the way they behave or react to situations or people.Accordingly,in
his last summer's work on temperament:Personality traits,Dr meyers saw
it as an individuals mental disposition channelled to a particular
stimuli.Temperament is more,less,a basic inherited style;it could be
likened to an artistic canvas.It is the fabric underlying whom you
are.In psychology,temperament refers to those aspect of an individuals
personality such as introversion or extroversion,that are often regarded as innate rather than learned.
However,this subject has been widely categorized by several
scholars-none,though,has attained a unanimous acceptance. For the
purpose of the clarity and full comprehension of this discourse,a
working definition shall be designed as a characteristic or habitual
inclination or mode of emotional response.
PERSONALITY
Personality here could mean the painting in the aforementioned
canvas.It is what is built on top of ones temperament.Persons of
common temperament can be pretty different in personality.Factors that
affects behaviour
includes,socialization,education,birth,order,siblings or lack of
siblings and interpersonal pressures.
HISTORICAL BACKGROUND AND UNDERLYING PROPOSITIONS UPON WHICH
TEMPERAMENT IS FORMED.
The concept of temperament was based in the four humours theory.It
played an important role in pre-modern psychology and was explored by
philosophers such as Immanuel Kant and Hermann Lotze.David N Keirsey
equally enhanced the formation of early temperament models as was
evidenced by his temperament sorter.
Accordingly,Temperament theory has it's root in one of the
ancient four humours theory.It may have Origins in ancient Egypt or
Mesopotamia but it was the Greek physician Hippocrates(460-370)who
developed it into a medical theory.He believed certain human
moods,emotions,and behaviours were caused by body fluids called
'humours'. Blood,yellow bile,black bile,and phlem.Next was
Galen(AD131-200)who developed the first typology of temperament in his
dissertation'De temperamentis'and inquird for physiological reason for
different behaviours in homo sapiens.He mapped them to a matrix of
hot/cold and dry/wet taken from the four elements.Their is also the
possibility of balance between the quantities yielding a total of Nine
temperaments.The word temperament originated from Latin 'temperare'-to
mix.In the ideal personality(melancholic)the complementary
characteristics or warm-cool and dry moist were exquisitely balanced.
In four less ideal types,one of the four qualities was
dominant over all others..
In the remaining four types one pair of qualities dominated cool and
dry.These later four were the temperamental category Galen
named'sanguine'melancholic'choleric'and phlegmatic' after the bodily
humours.Each was the excess of one of the body fluids that provided,in
turn,the imbalance in paired qualities.
In the canon of medicine,Avicenna(1980-1037)extended
temperamental theory to incorporate'emotional aspect,mental
capacity,moral attitudes,selfawareness,movement and dreams.
However,the notion of fluids in human temperament
formation,though,with a strong indubitable background got some raps
and rejection from scholars like Nicholas Culpepar (1616-1654) who
disregarded the idea of fluids as defining human behaviour and
Immanuel Kant(1704-1804)...................to be continued