Galen's Prophecy: Temperament In Human Nature

Galen's Prophecy: Temperament In Human Nature

by Jerome Kagan
Galen's Prophecy: Temperament In Human Nature

Galen's Prophecy: Temperament In Human Nature

by Jerome Kagan

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Overview

Nearly two thousand years ago a physician named Galen of Pergamon suggested that much of the variation in human behavior could be explained by an individual's temperament. Since that time, inborn dispositions have fallen in and out of favor. Based on fifteen years of research, Galen's Prophecy now provides fresh insights into these complex questions, offering startling new evidence to support Galen's ancient classification of melancholic and sanguine adults. Integrating evidence and ideas from biology, philosophy, and psychology, Jerome Kagan examines the implications of the idea of temperament for aggressive behavior, conscience, psychopathology, and the degree to which each of us can be expected to control our deepest emotions.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780429979910
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Publication date: 10/08/2018
Sold by: Barnes & Noble
Format: eBook
Pages: 404
File size: 2 MB

About the Author

Jerome Kagan

Read an Excerpt

The Idea of Temperament:
The Past

Genio y hechura hasta sepultura.
("Natures and features last to the grave.")
—Spanish saying

Every age has a preferred explanation of the obvious differences among people that are always a focus of curiosity and a topic for gossip. The most persuasive accounts attribute most of the human variation to one causal mechanism, for the mind likes single-process explanations over those that involve multiple forces; the latter are difficult to grasp and therefore less pleasing.

The most fundamental division among the diverse explanations contrasts inherent qualities, present at birth and operating throughout life, with a history of experiences. The arguments that emphasize inherent processes assume that humans are basically different and usually attribute the differences to physiology—in ancient times to bodily fluids and, since the turn of the century, to genes. The arguments for experience, which assume that humans begin life fundamentally similar, award potency to air, water, diet, and—over the past three hundred years—to social encounters. This division between internal and external influences is linked to the ancient split in Western thought between material and mental processes—body versus soul.

It is not surprising that the reigning philosophy of a society favors one or the other of these views, for a preference for one of these frames has political implications. In societies that practice slavery—ancient Rome, for example—citizens are tempted to believe that they are fundamentally dissimilar to those they command. If one's position as citizen or slave could have beenthe result of the vicissitudes of life, exploiting another person could become ethically uncomfortable. A belief in inherent differences mutes the occasional guilt that might rise in the slave holder. Therefore, one might expect that the interpretation of psychological variation held by these societies would favor endogenous differences.

The Ancient View in the West

The Greeks and Romans believed that a balance among the four humors of yellow and black bile, blood, and phlegm, present in all persons, created an opposition within each of two pairs of bodily qualities: warm versus cool and dry versus moist (see figure 1.1). These four qualities were related to the four fundamental substances in the world: fire, air, earth, and water. The Greeks assumed, without a detailed appreciation of genetics or physiology, that the balance among these qualities produced an invisible inner state that was responsible for the observed variation in rationality, emotionality, and behavior. Children and women, for example, could not help being impulsive and irrational, for they were born with an excess of the moist quality.

Galen, an extraordinarily perceptive second-century physician born in Asia Minor, elaborated these Hippocratic ideas by positing nine temperamental types that were derived from the four humors. (The word temperament comes from the Latin verb temperare, "to mix.") In the ideal personality, the complementary characteristics of warm-cool and dry-moist were exquisitely balanced. In four less ideal types, one of the four qualities was dominant. In the remaining four types, one pair of qualities dominated the complementary pair; for example, warm and moist dominated cool and dry. These latter four were the temperamental categories Galen called melancholic, sanguine, choleric, and phlegmatic. Each was the result of an excess of one of the bodily humors that produced, in turn, the imbalance in paired qualities. The melancholic was cool and dry because of an excess of black bile; the sanguine was warm and moist because of an excess of blood; the choleric was warm and dry because of an excess of yellow bile, and the phlegmatic was cool and moist because of an excess of phlegm.

Although the concentrations of the four humors and the relative dominance of the derived qualities were inherent in each individual's physiology, nonetheless they were somewhat susceptible to the influence of external events, especially climate and diet. The body naturally became warmer and more moist in the spring; hence, people became more sanguine. When the body became cooler and drier in the fall, a melancholic mood became more prevalent. Differences in climate and the resulting differences in foods also contributed to differences in personal qualities. Hippocrates—born about 460 b.c.—believed that Asians (he probably meant those living on the Indian subcontinent) were gentler than Mediterranean groups because of the more stable, gentler climate in the former area.

When the Arabs began to dominate North Africa and the Middle East in the seventh century, they translated Galen's books and adopted his precepts with little change. Ibn Ridwan, an eleventh-century Islamic physician, attributed the presumed impulsivity, inconstancy, and timidity among Egyptians to an unhealthy balance among the body humors traceable, in part, to the extremely humid and hot climate of the region of the Nile.

Table of Contents

* The Idea of Temperament: The Past * What Is Temperament? * The Family of Fears * The Beginnings * The Physiology of Inhibited and Uninhibited Children * Early Predictors of the Two Types * Infant Reactivity and Sympathetic Physiology * Implications * Reflections
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