Temperament

Temperament occupies a peculiarly contested position in the depth-psychology corpus, suspended between the somatic and the psychic, the constitutional and the cultivated. Jung’s treatment in Psychological Types is foundational: he inherits the classical humoral schema—blood, phlegm, black bile, yellow bile—and their corresponding temperamental dispositions, yet insists that present-day endocrinology has merely substituted hormones for the old body-secretions, leaving the essential enigma of psyche-body unity unresolved. For Jung, temperament names the sum-total of emotional reactions, an indelible constitutional substrate that shapes but does not wholly determine psychological type. William James brings a distinct American pragmatism to the question, identifying the ‘psychopathic temperament’ as the very organ of religious and moral perception, and distinguishing the ‘healthy-minded’ from the ‘sick soul’ along recognizably temperamental lines. Hillman adds a theoretical turn, reading Jung’s preference for monotheism over polytheism as itself expressive of a ‘theological temperament.’ The Philokalia tradition frames temperament as the body’s balance, liable to disturbance by diet, weather, and demonic agency, requiring ascetic regulation. Across these voices, temperament signals the irreducible individuality that psychological theory must reckon with before any typological scheme can be applied.

In the library 16 passages

Not even the doctors of today would equate a temperament, that is, a certain kind of emotional state or excitability, directly with the constitution of the blood or lymph… The ‘humours’ of present-day medicine are no longer the old body-secretions, but the more subtle hormones, which influence ‘temperament’ to an outstanding degree

Jung redefines temperament as the sum-total of emotional reactions while tracing its genealogy from humoral medicine to endocrinology, insisting the psyche-body unity underpinning it remains scientifically unresolved.

Jung, Carl Gustav, Psychological Types, 1921thesis

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In the psychopathic temperament we have the emotionality which is the sine quâ non of moral perception; we have the intensity and tendency to emphasis which are the essence of practical moral vigor; and we have the love of metaphysics and mysticism which carry one’s interests beyond the surface of the sensible world.

James argues that the psychopathic temperament, far from disqualifying religious experience, is the very constitutional endowment that makes deep moral and mystical perception possible.

James, William, The Varieties of Religious Experience Amazon, 1902thesis

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the healthy-minded temperament, the temperament which has a constitutional incapacity for prolonged suffering, and in which the tendency to see things optimistically is like a water of crystallization in which the individual’s character is set.

James describes the healthy-minded temperament as a constitutionally optimistic disposition that becomes the organizing matrix for a specific type of religion.

James, William, The Varieties of Religious Experience Amazon, 1902thesis

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when these four liquids are in proper balance we are said to have a good temperament, which is derived from the Latin temperamentum, ‘correct mixture.’ This balanced state of composure and tranquility is the virtue that will now allow us to progress to the third act and into the soul of reason.

Place recovers the etymological root of temperament as ‘correct mixture,’ linking the humoral balance of the four liquids to moral virtue and rational development.

Place, Robert M., The Tarot: History, Symbolism, and Divination, 2005thesis

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Each of these humors, in turn, was believed to be the cause of a psychological temperament: phlegm caused sluggishness; blood cheerfulness; black bile sadness; and yellow bile vindictiveness… The modern pioneer of Depth Psychology Carl Jung investigated the four temperaments but found that they did not relate well to his psychological observations.

Place surveys the classical humoral-temperamental scheme and notes that Jung, while engaging the fourfold system, ultimately found it inadequate to his empirical psychological observations.

Place, Robert M., The Tarot: History, Symbolism, and Divination, 2005supporting

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Jung’s hypothesis may be one more expression of the theological temperament. This temperament has been more narrowly described as introversion, for Jung writes: ‘The monistic tendency is a characteristic of introversion, the pluralistic of extraversion.’

Hillman argues that Jung’s theoretical preference for monotheism over polytheism is itself a manifestation of an introverted theological temperament rather than a universal developmental truth.

Hillman, James, Archetypal Psychology, 1983supporting

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Jung’s hypothesis may be one more expression of the theological temperament. This temperament has been more narrowly described as introversion, for Jung writes: ‘The monistic tendency is a characteristic of introversion, the pluralistic of extraversion.’

Hillman identifies temperament as an attitudinal given that conditions even theoretical systems, linking introversion to monotheistic theology and extraversion to polytheism.

Hillman, James, Archetypal Psychology: A Brief Account, 1983supporting

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The intellect that has shut out the senses, and has achieved a balance in the body’s temperament, has to fight only against its memories… Moderate fasting, vigils and psalmody are natural means for achieving a balance in the body’s temperament.

The Philokalia tradition treats bodily temperament as a physiological balance subject to ascetic regulation, with fasting, vigils, and psalmody prescribed as the means of its stabilization.

Palmer, G. E. H. and Sherrard, Philip and Ware, Kallistos (trs.), The Philokalia, Volume 4, 1995supporting

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The Latin temperament is rooted in the intellectual order of life. An artist of this temperament, suspicious of if not hostile towards his emotions, will give his feeling rein only up to that point at which it does not interfere with the clarity of his intellectual vision.

Louth conveys a typology distinguishing the Latin from the Greek temperament along the axis of intellectual versus emotional ordering, with direct implications for artistic and spiritual orientation.

Louth, Andrew, Modern Orthodox Thinkers: From the Philokalia to the Presentsupporting

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The controversy about universals undoubtedly forms part of that ‘clash of temperaments’ in philosophy to which James alludes. These associations tempt one to think of the tender-minded as introverted and the tough-minded as extraverted.

Jung appropriates James’s ‘clash of temperaments’ to map the tender-minded/tough-minded polarity onto the introversion/extraversion axis, grounding philosophical disagreement in constitutional psychological difference.

Jung, Carl Gustav, Psychological Types, 1921supporting

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it is usually laboured accomplishment without the natural ease and grace of the Mercurial temperament… masking a sensitive and deeply thoughtful temperament with habitual silence.

Greene employs temperament as an astrological-psychological descriptor, contrasting the Mercury-Saturn individual’s effortful, taciturn disposition with the fluent ease of a more mercurial temperamental endowment.

Liz Greene, Saturn: A New Look at an Old Devil, 1976supporting

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Human temperament is mundane wood, the true nature of humanity is celestial wood. Using the true fire of the original spirit to burn away the mundane wood of temperament, when the temperament vanishes the true nature appears.

The Taoist commentary identifies temperament as the conditioned, mundane layer of human nature that must be refined and consumed by inner spiritual fire so that the original, unconditioned nature can emerge.

Thomas Cleary, Liu Yiming, The Taoist I Ching, 1986supporting

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when some one peculiar quality / Doth so possess a man, that it doth draw / All his affects, his spirits, and his powers, / In their confluxions, all to run one way, / This may be truly said to be a humour.

Miller, via Ben Jonson’s theory of humours, articulates how a dominant physiological quality organizes the whole of a person’s affects and powers — an early literary-psychological formulation of what depth psychology would call temperament.

Miller, David L., Achelous and the Butterfly: Toward an Archetypal Psychology of Humor, 1973supporting

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Her father was in every respect an energetic, strongwilled man, with an impetuous temperament, and adventurous in love affairs… The Celts are full of temperament, impetuous, passionate.

Jung employs temperament in an associative clinical context, using it as a shorthand for an inherited impetuous energetic quality that passes through ancestral and cultural lines.

Jung, Carl Gustav, The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche, 1960aside

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the speed of mental reaction is a decisive criterion for determining to which type a scientist belongs. Discoverers with rapid reactivity are romantics, those with slower reactions are classics.

Jung, drawing on Ostwald’s typology, uses reactive speed as a quasi-temperamental criterion distinguishing the romantic from the classic scientific type.

Jung, Carl Gustav, Psychological Types, 1921aside

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If to beauty you add temperance, and if in other respects you are what Critias declares you to be, then

Plato distinguishes temperance as a cultivated virtue added to natural endowment, foreshadowing the depth-psychological tension between constitutional temperament and acquired character.

Plato, Charmides, -380aside

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