The Four Personalities: Melancholy

This is the third post in a series, the topic of which is The Four Personalities. If you have not read the first and second posts, I encourage you to do so before continuing. Again, while I am perhaps putting a unique spin on how I present The Four Personalities, I can claim none of the substance of these posts to be my own creation: The best and most accessible book I can recommend on the subject is Personality Plus by Florence Littauer.

The Four Personalities: Sanguine

This is the second post in a series, the topic of which is The Four Personalities. If you have not read the previous post, I encourage you to do so before continuing. As a brief disclaimer: While I am perhaps putting a unique spin on how I present The Four Personalities, I can claim none of the substance of these posts to be my own creation. Again, the best and most accessible book I can recommend on the subject is Personality Plus by Florence Littauer. With that, let us finally begin:

Imagine—while retaining your human senses and intellect—that you are a fly on the wall, living within a suburban home in which a party is about to be held. You observe the hosts scampering about, preparing for their friends to arrive. As the guests begin to appear, you notice how different they are, not necessarily in terms of demographic, but in personality.

The first personality you notice is inevitably the Sanguine. Even if you don't see her at first, you undoubtedly hear her. As you turn to see who is making such a racket you will probably find a group of people huddled around, listening to and watching, one person—the Sanguine. In such a situation the Sanguine finds herself perfectly at home. She loves being around people, and she loves being the center of attention. Undoubtedly extroverted and optimistic, she has an appealing personality, and her vivaciousness, charm, and love of life draw people to her. She has a unique energy and enthusiasm, and makes friends easily. In many ways she is like a child, innocent and sincere at heart, even if she doesn't appear to be. She likes to laugh, have fun, live in the moment, and be spontaneous, and can't understand anyone who may be bored or depressed. She doesn't take herself seriously, and can even make fun of herself and the silly things she has done without embarrassment. She doesn't hold grudges, and thrives on compliments.

At first you may think you've discovered one of the most interesting and perfect people alive. But as you keep watching you notice that while the Sanguine seemed great on the surface, there is indeed more to the story. It doesn't take long to notice that she just plain talks too much, or at least doesn't seem to let anyone else talk. She has a tendency to talk without thinking, is constantly interrupting people, and seems to verbalize whatever may happen to be running through her obviously fast-paced conscious mind. Such unthinking behavior seems to offend certain people, even though the Sanguine has no real intention of being offensive. Another thing that seems glaringly obvious is that she seems utterly obsessed with herself. At any moment whatsoever she is somehow able to bring the conversation back around to focus on her, or on something she did, or on something she has done, or on something that has happened to her, or even on some object she wants to show off. Again, you notice offense being taken by other guests. Before long one of the hosts arrives on the scene to ask her about the dish she was supposed to bring, only to be told “oops, I forgot!” Not a big deal to the Sanguine, of course, as she laughs it off, “oh well!” Though heaven forbid someone ever-so-mildly reprimand the Sanguine, because it's very likely that she will end up crying, or throwing a tantrum. Emotion, you notice, plays a key role in the Sanguine psyche. But fear not, she'll bounce back in mere moments, and be back in the throws of laughter in no time. You've barely spent half an hour with her and you realize that she's an emotional roller-coaster. Experiencing bouts of laughter and exhilaration and joy followed by lapses of sadness and despair, and she hasn't even eaten dinner! (A similar feat was no doubt accomplished before lunch as well!)

So there you've got it. A brief yet revealing glimpse into the world of the Sanguine. Lively, charming, and entertaining, with good intentions, but also emotional, fickle, disorganized and sometimes unthinking.

If I had to pick an instrumental-style song to represent the Sanguine, I would go with something like this:

Up next: Melancholy(!)

Introducing The Four Personalities

Many of you may have read about and studied what is commonly known as “the four personalities,” or "the four temperaments." Today there are many theories about personality and personality types in psychology and folk psychology, and it is not my intention to outline or discuss them all. Rather, in this post and in the posts that follow I will be considering one, which says that (generally speaking) people can be broken down into four different categories of behavior: Sanguine, Choleric, Melancholy and Phlegmatic. This post marks the beginning of a series of posts which will further discuss the details and implications of this perspective.

As a side note, I have never written about what I will from now on refer to as “The Personalities,” though I have been a student of it for many years. What I am going to write in this and future posts is not material of my own creation. The best and most accessible book I can recommend on the subject is Personality Plus by Florence Littauer.

Above I stated that people can be broken down into four different categories of behavior: Sanguine, Choleric, Melancholy, and Phlegmatic. A “category of behavior” is simply a set of behavioral dispositions, or personality traits, that people consistently display, each one broadly being labeled with a different word. This is not to say that everyone is either Sanguine, Choleric, Melancholy, or Phlegmatic. A given person may indeed be considered a “Sanguine,” or a “Phlegmatic,” but such a label is not supposed to tell us all there is to know about their personality (it may, however, tell us a lot). The fact is is that everyone is a combination of the four personalities. We all have elements of each of the four personalities in varying proportions, and in varying ways, which combine to make up our own unique personality. Moreover, most of us will find that we dominate in two of the four personalities, having a “strong pair” and a “weak pair” to describe ourselves (generally in each pair one will be stronger). Thus, even though I have elements of all four personalities in my own personality, my strong pair happens to be Choleric (50%) and Sanguine (37.5%), while my weak pair happens to be Melancholy (7.5%) and Phlegmatic (5%). If you already understand The Personalities, then you already have a pretty good grasp of mine, though the way in which I instantiate traits from each personality type will be hidden from you until you become acquainted with me.

In the posts that follow we will begin discussing each personality in detail. First up will be Sanguine (stay tuned).