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The four temperament theory is a proto-psychological theory which suggests that there are four fundamental personality types: sanguine, choleric, melancholic, and phlegmatic. [ 2 ] [ 3 ] Most formulations include the possibility of mixtures among the types where an individual's personality types overlap and they share two or more temperaments.
The melancholic and choleric, however, shared a sustained response (dryness), and the sanguine and phlegmatic shared a short-lived response (wetness). This meant that the choleric and melancholic both would tend to hang on to emotions like anger, and thus appear more serious and critical than the fun-loving sanguine, and the peaceful phlegmatic.
The four humors as depicted in an 18th-century woodcut: phlegmatic, choleric, sanguine and melancholic. The imbalance of humors, or dyscrasia, was thought to be the direct cause of all diseases. Health was associated with a balance of humors, or eucrasia. The qualities of the humors, in turn, influenced the nature of the diseases they caused.
In fact, the original four types of temperament (choleric, melancholic, phlegmatic and sanguine) suggested by Hippocrates and Galen resemble mild forms of types of psychiatric disorders described in modern classifications. Moreover, Hippocrates-Galen hypothesis of chemical imbalances as factors of consistent individual differences has also been ...
In Galen's view, an imbalance of each humor corresponded with a particular human temperament (blood – sanguine, black bile – melancholic, yellow bile – choleric, and phlegm – phlegmatic). Thus, individuals with sanguine temperaments are extroverted and social; choleric people have energy, passion, and charisma; melancholics are creative ...
These temperaments are sanguine (dominated by the humor blood), choleric (dominated by yellow bile), melancholy (dominated by black bile), and phlegmatic (dominated by phlegm). The ideal proportion to attain harmony is "one quarter as much phlegm as blood, one sixteenth as much choler as blood, and one sixty-fourth as much melancholy as blood."
People were thought to be either of the four temperaments: choleric, melancholic, phlegmatic, or sanguine. During the Middle Ages in Europe, the Latin term complexio served as the translated form of the Greek word crasis, meaning temperament. [1]
The predominance of specific Humours creates specific temperaments: Sanguine, Choleric, Melancholy, and Phlegmatic. "The proportion in which the Humours are blended differs from one man to another and constitutes his complexio or temperamentum , his combination or mixture."