the four temperaments

 

 

Unraveling human behavior

by Rubens Salles

The theory of temperaments – melancholic, choleric, sanguine, phlegmatic – that represent “spices” of human behavior, dates back to Empedocles, in ancient Greece, who related them to the four natural elements – earth, fire, air, water. Hippocrates called them the four humors. Later they were also studied by Kant, Wilhelm Wundt, and more recently by the English psychologist HJEysenck.(1) Steiner deepened this study from Anthroposophy, and considers the knowledge of temperaments essential for the teacher.

“Man really is within a current that we can call the current of heredity, of inherited characteristics. To this, however, something different is added in him, which is the innermost spiritual core of the human entity. Thus, what man has brought from the spiritual world is united with what his father, mother and ancestors can give him [...] What is placed between the hereditary line and the line that represents our individuality is expressed by the The word “temperament”[…], is something like the physiognomy of his most intimate individuality”.(2) Rudolf Steiner

Knowledge of temperaments can help the teacher to deal with students who have one of the very dominant temperaments, as these are the most difficult children to educate. The challenge for each of us is to have as balanced a temperament as possible, especially being a teacher. Having control over his own temperament, the teacher can better help each student to harmonize his temperament. On the contrary, if the teacher is an extreme choleric, for example, he may be a tyrant in the class, or if he is an extreme phlegmatic, he will not be able to enthuse the students to learn.

Every human being has a different mix of the 4 temperaments. The choleric x phlegmatic and sanguine x melancholic temperaments are antagonistic, and so, generally, we have a dominant temperament, its opposite is weak, and characteristics of the other two can appear at intermediate levels.

Main characteristics of temperaments

	CHOLERIC	BLOOD	PHLEGMATIC	melancholic
Physical appearance	Short, stocky, erect, stocky, thick-necked.	Slender, elegant, well balanced.	Strong, burly, round.	Big, bony, heavy-limbed, head bent.
Floor	Firm, digging your heels into the ground.	Light, shooting on tiptoe.	Wavy, slow (moves overwhelmingly).	Slow, with a tendency to stoop, gait stooped.
Eyes	Energetic, active.	Dancing, alive, joyful.	Sleepy, lethargic, almost always half-closed.	Tragic, sad, sorry.
gestures	Short, harsh, abrupt, sudden.	Graceful, vivacious.	Slow, intentional, deliberate.	discouraged
Way of speaking	Strong, abrupt, emphatic, expressive, vigorous, intentional, appropriate.	Eloquent, with flowery language.	Thoughtful, logical, of course.	Hesitant, weak, not completing sentences, deficient.
relationships	Friendly as long as you can keep the lead.	Friendly with all capricious, changeable fickle.	Friendly but reserved, insensitive, impassive.	Weak, and sympathy only for companions in misfortune.
habits	He needs to infect everyone with his animation	It is flexible, it has no fixed habits.	Likes routine, has determined habits.	Likes solitary occupations.
Food	He likes spicy, well-prepared food.	Pinch, likes beautiful food, well presented.	Eats very substantial food, and everything.	He is meticulous, and he likes sweet foods.
Clothing	Likes something individual and quirky.	Likes new and colorful things.	It has a conservative taste.	Choose lifeless and sloppy clothes. It's hard to please.
power of observation	Examines what matters, but forgets.	Observe everything, but forget everything.	Observe and remember everything exactly, when sufficiently awake.	Observes little, but remembers everything.
Memory	Poor	Very poor	Good with regard to the outside world.	Good with respect to himself.
Interest	The world, itself and the future.	the immediate present	The uninvolved gift.	himself and the past.
Attitudes	Commanding, aggressive, and eventually understanding.	Kind, friendly and understanding.	Insightful, objective.	Selfish, vengeful, self-sacrifice in cases of suffering.
Disposition	Boastful, enthusiastic, noble, magnanimous, generous, intolerant, impatient and adventurous	Gentle, friendly, changeable, superficial, fickle, impatient, irresponsible.	Loyal, steady, lethargic, content, motherly, dependable.	Self-absorbed, moody, fearful, depressed, tyrannical, helpful, artistic.
Favorite drawings and paintings	Volcanoes, precipices with the very conquest of obstacles. Strong colors.	Lots of bright colors, details and movements.	Soft, bland, uninteresting, unfinished looking.	Harmonious and strong colors. Try to detail too much.

Source: Colégio Waldorf Micael team

Child's reaction to various situations, according to temperaments.

	CHOLERIC	BLOOD	PHLEGMATIC	melancholic
fall in the playground	Find the reason outside of yourself. Blame someone. Be proud of your hurt	Question: “Have I fallen?” Cry for a moment and forget about it.	He is stoic, gets up and remains impassive.	Endure and assume the “unbearable” pain. The world is about to end, and it was made to hurt me.
tour canceled	He dominates the situation, gathers the group in protest.	Appreciate the novelty and think about alternatives	Indifferent. He won't forget, but he's not vindictive.	I knew all along that it was going to be cancelled, just to hurt him.
new teacher	Possible rival. You must introduce the teacher to the class. It can both help and hinder.	Someone new. Enjoy the situation.	Admits after a few weeks that there is a new teacher and stops calling him by the name of the previous one.	New enemy. Just when he was starting to get used to the previous one. More suffering.
A task	He rushes over it and completes it.	He finds it easy and interesting, but soon abandons it when the novelty wears off.	Ponder, reflect, plan and have difficulty finishing on time.	Another burden in life for him to bear.

Source: Colégio Waldorf Micael team

Although temperaments are individual characteristics, we can consider that, as a group, children are more sanguine, adolescents are more choleric, adults more melancholic and the elderly become more phlegmatic. According to Steiner, temperaments should not be seen as “flaws” to be fought (emphasis by the author). None of them is good or bad in itself, except when it is one-sided, extremely preponderant over the others. The author indicates the dangers of unilateral behavior.(3)

Dangers of one-sided behavior

	CHOLERIC	BLOOD	PHLEGMATIC	melancholic
lesser danger	To be molded, in youth, by his irascible nature, and not be able to control himself.	Become an extremely fickle person	Lack of interest in the outside world.	The depression.
greater danger	To become a tyrant, obsessed with a single goal.	May the constant fluctuation of your sensations result in mental alienation.	Idiocy, mental weakness.	The madness

 Source: Steiner 2002 – Our organization

Every one-sided temperament denotes some imbalance, which at school can be dealt with pedagogically. This imbalance is, in fact, a type of strength that the child has too much, and that he needs to “spend”. Thus, the teacher needs to learn to act with each child according to the characteristics of his temperament, and not simply try to force him to change it, applying punishments, etc. Steiner says that temperament is based on the most intimate nature of man and we must take into account that we will only be able to soften it in a pedagogical way. It is only from the guided exercise of his own temperament that he creates the strength to transform himself. “Therefore, we do not count on what the child does not have, but on what he has.”(4) Steiner indicates some basic strategies for dealing with children according to their predominant temperament:

Sanguine

More than any other, the sanguine child needs to develop a love for the teacher. In order to educate her, we must make ourselves loved by her. “Love is the magic word. It is along this indirect path of affection for a particular personality that the entire education of the sanguine child must pass.” This child is characterized by not being able to maintain any lasting interest. We then need to try to figure out what might interest her the most, and choose activities that she might be sanguine about. Steiner says:

“We must try to surround the child with all sorts of things in which he has a deeper interest. Then we will occupy the child with such things, for certain periods of time, things in which a passing interest is justified, next to which he, so to speak, may be bloodthirsty, things that do not deserve the person to maintain an interest in them. We must let these things speak to the blood, we must let them work on the child; and then we must take them away from her, so that the child will want them again, and they will be given to them again. We must, therefore, let them act on the child.”(5) Rudolf Steiner

Choleric

Unlike the Sanguine, the choleric will not easily be able to feel love for the teacher, but there is another indirect way to help his education: respect and admiration for an authority. Steiner explains that “for the choleric child, we must sincerely be worthy of respect and esteem, in the highest sense of the word. It is not a question, in this case, of becoming loved for our personal qualities, as in the case of the sanguine child; what matters is that the choleric child can always believe that the educator knows what he is doing [...] We must take care to have the firm reins of authority in our hands, never showing ignorance of how to act.”

The choleric has a great urge to lead and get things done. To control this impetus in the classroom, the teacher must always propose what is difficult to accomplish, and it is even important that he cannot overcome all obstacles. “We must create obstacles, so that the choleric temperament is not repressed, but can express itself precisely through the confrontation with certain difficulties that he [the child] has to overcome […] we must organize the environment in such a way that this choleric temperament can exhaust yourself having to overcome obstacles.”

So, when a choleric has a tantrum, for example, instead of trying to repress him right away, which is usually impossible, the remedy is to immediately give him a difficult activity, to exhaust his anger, and comment on the reason. from cholera only after it has passed.(6)

melancholy

The melancholic child has the characteristic of thinking that the world is against him, that everything happens to hurt him, and he clings deeply to obstacles. The educator's access route to the melancholic is the difficulties and sufferings that the teacher himself had to live. The child needs to feel that the teacher has already been through suffering. Steiner maintains that “the melancholy child is predisposed to suffering; she has the capacity to feel pain, disillusionment; this is ingrained within him, and cannot be extinguished by force – but it can be diverted […] A person who, with his narrative, can make the melancholy come to feel as he has been tested by fate, he brings a great benefit to this type of child.”(7)

It's no use trying to cheer or comfort a melancholy, except to make his melancholy worse. It is necessary for him to experience justified pains, for him to know what sufferings exist, and how men can triumph over them. And it's important to show that we respect the sacrifices he makes and the obstacles he overcomes. The melancholy student needs to feel that the teacher pays special attention to him, and we should not give him any assignments. He needs to feel that he is doing something for someone, a sacrifice for the teacher, for himself or for the class; then he does a good job.

Phlegmatic

The phlegmatic child has difficulty getting involved with what is happening around him. Its negative point is this lack of interest. To get their interest, the best way is to promote their integration with other children, so that they live with the interests of their peers. In Steiner's view, it is not the things themselves that act on the phlegmatic. It is not through a subject of school or homework that we will be able to interest the little phlegmatic, but through the indirect path, passing through the interests of other children of the same age. It is precisely when things are reflected in other people that these interests are reflected in the soul of the phlegmatic child.(8)

It is also important, as in other temperaments, to take advantage of and value their characteristics to involve them in learning. Phlegmatics are slow learners, but they have great memories and are good planners. The author suggests that “we try to provide events in which phlegm is opportune. We must direct the phlegm towards the right objects, before which one can be phlegmatic. With this, sometimes magnificent results can be obtained with the small child”.

Temperaments in the Classroom

In addition to studying how to individually act on the child's temperament, it is necessary to know how to better manage them in the classroom. Students should be grouped by predominant temperament. Contrary to what we initially thought, Sanguines, for example, don't talk anymore because they stay together. In this way they wear out their excesses among themselves. Sanguines tend to tire of their agitation, phlegmatics of their immobility, and so on. Cholerics will talk less to each other than to sitting next to others.

Cholerics are those to whom the teacher will ask for more help. According to professor Celina Targa, to deal with the energy of the choleric it is important to always give him activity, invent things for him to do! “Go get a handout from the secretary.” Or else: “Please! Open the door here for me, it's hot.” "Open the window." “Erase the blackboard.” We should give him activity, which is what he likes and helps to unwind.”(9)

Phlegmatics should be separated from cholerics and close to the teacher, as they tend to want to be more spectators than participants in the class. Phlegmatics don't like too much agitation. Targa says that “so they need to stay close to the teacher because then we can follow them better. […] Where they feel surrounded in front of a stage. So the front rows are a very good place, otherwise they are forgotten.” Sanguines, on the other hand, as they are very fond of novelties, help the teacher to disseminate the subject among their colleagues. They can be between the choleric and the phlegmatic. Students with the greatest potential for disrupting work should be at the ends of the front row, never in the middle of the room. Melancholies, according to Targa, “need calm. They don't like this choleric turmoil. This is bad for the melancholy. So a more welcoming, warm region, usually close to the windows in a corner”. From time to time the teacher can make small changes and variations but always without losing sight of the harmony of the class. To act positively on the temperaments of his students, it is essential that the teacher work on his own temperament. This mental disposition is, according to Steiner, of paramount importance, because the child is educated 'from soul to soul'.

“It's amazing what goes on in the subterranean threads that run from one soul to another. Much happens when you remain impassive in front of a choleric child, or when you become intimately interested in what goes on in a phlegmatic child. There, the mental disposition itself will have, on the supersensible level, an educational effect on the child. Education is carried out for what you are, [...] in the midst of children. Never really lose sight of it.”(10) Rudolf Steiner

Some Valuable Rules for Dealing with Children According to Temperaments

	CHOLERIC	BLOOD	PHLEGMATIC	melancholic
To stimulate activity	launch a challenge	ask a personal favor	Use shock, attack tactics. Speak directly, getting to the main point.	Explain how others will suffer if he fails.
In the event of reprimand	Recall the wrongdoing afterwards and debate, examine, and discuss.	Have a friendly word right away.	Take immediate action.	Draw attention soon to the later consequences.
general	Provide stories or descriptions where recklessness becomes dangerous or ridiculous. Giving away a lot of different things, making them pose a challenge.	Provide lively stories with exciting descriptions, with continuous and varied frames. Give plenty of different things to do.	Tell indifferent stories in an apathetic way. Assign a task and determine to follow through on it.	Tell stories or descriptions of sad events to show how the human spirit sometimes triumphs. Taking an interest in sadness and asking it to help someone less able.

Source: Colégio Waldorf Micael team

Bibliography

1. Apud CARLGREN, Frans and KLINGBORG, Arne. Education for Freedom – the Pedagogy of Rudolf Steiner. 2006, p. 69.
2. STEINER, Rudolph. The Mystery of Temperaments. 2002, p. 15.
3. STEINER, Rudolph. The Mystery of Temperaments. 2002, p. div.
4. STEINER, Rudolph. The Mystery of Temperaments. 2002, p. div.
5. STEINER, Rudolph. The Mystery of Temperaments. 2002, p. div.
6. STEINER, Rudolph. The Mystery of Temperaments. 2002, p. div.
7. STEINER, Rudolph. The Mystery of Temperaments. 2002, p. 48.
8. STEINER, Rudolph. The Mystery of Temperaments. 2002, p. 51.
9. TARGA, Celina AN Class from the Dom da Palavra project (video recorded). 2008
10. STEINER, Rudolph. The Art of Education III: Pedagogical Discussions. 1999, p. 18.

 

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