This is the first of what I suspect will be several blogs on “temperament,” something I have been interested in for about 45 years. Let me indulge myself with a bit of history here, namely how I came into this idea of “temperament.” I started this rather odd profession of being a psychologist in 1966 right after I graduated from college and entered seminary. That would be 52 years ago. My first work was with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship (IVCF) as a campus minister doing what I suppose was a bit of “counseling” of undergraduates, who were then maybe two or three years younger than I was. Then through a chain of events I had the opportunity to be in a group of people who gathered weekly for an “encounter group,” which was, in a way, a part of an important movement adjacent to “The 60’s revolution” where everything was up for grabs, everything questioned, and many things challenged. It was an exciting time for me because it was a time where I could explore the many things that have continued to fascinate me for these past 52 years, and continue to fascinate me. While there were many excesses in the 60’s, it was an important time in America that had just finished the 50’s where everything was stable, the 40’s where we had war, and the 30’s where we had desperation. It was a time that many people challenged anything and everything. It was also a time where there was a great resistance to these challenges.
I challenged a lot. For instance, I challenged my quite Republican/conservative theology while simultaneously holding tightly to what I thought was a deeply Christian theology and value system. I challenged my seminary professors to such an extent that I was asked to “reapply” for my senior year because of my perceived recalcitrance. I thought I was just interested in finding the truth, but I was perceived as simply resistant and arrogant. Certainly there was some truth in their perception, but give me a break, I was a “Young Turk” of 23 and asking questions that I thought everyone should ask. I read an article in Look Magazine of all things, about Gene McCarthy and immediately became a follower of his politics. While in Portland, OR at the time I had the opportunity to hear Robert Kennedy speak the day he lost the OR primary but then won the CA Democratic primary the next day, minutes before he was assassinated. Challenge was good for me, but during these early 20’s I had no idea of the journey I was taking, a journey I am still on. I thought it was a good time to challenge everything, albeit with a respect for people of different opinions.
In this time of personal challenging I continued in this encounter group, which was my first real experience in real life psychology. The mode of the group was to experience and let it all hang out. In other words to trust your feelings, speak your feelings, and trust the truth that came out of speaking your feelings. This orientation to saying anything that came to your mind fit my extraverted nature quite well, but it took me years, if not decades, to learn to temper my expression of my thoughts and feelings. I mistakenly thought that everyone should be as extraverted as I was, which was an example of the excesses of the 60’s and the excesses of my experience in the 60’s. It seemed right to me to be able to challenge openly not realizing that I often offended people in my expressions of feelings, sometimes for a lifetime. It saddens me to see the many mistakes I made during these formative years. Yet in allowing myself to experience the joys of expression, I slowly learned that there is equal value in keeping one’s feelings and thoughts private, no small task for the flaming extravert that I am by nature.
Fast forward a bit: leave seminary 1, go to seminary #2 for my senior year, continue to challenge and have a deuce of a time finishing seminary. My continued challenges included coming to believe that no one will ever go to “hell” and maybe the Holy Scriptures weren’t not entirely accurate in everything they said, not positions that are commensurate with graduating from a conservative seminary. But graduate I did, albeit with mixed emotions, both on my part and at the part of my seminary. Thank God for Dr. Vernon Grounds, the president of Denver Seminary at the time, who for some unknown reason took me under his wing and steered me through these challenging years. Dr. Grounds, who had a PhD in psychology in addition to his theological studies, was now my second experience in psychology after the psychologist who led the encounter group in Portland. Yet I was still in the mode of seeing psychology too simply, namely “just let it all hang it out” and “say it the way it is.” Still the young Turk.
From seminary to graduate school at the University of Iowa, first in a pastoral counseling program, which turned out to be a bad fit and then into psychology proper, where I learned of psychological testing and diagnosing. I was in love again, this time with the categories of people by what was wrong with them. This guy was schizophrenic, this other guy was depressed, this gal was addicted, and the other one was anxious. Something seemed right about this finding ways of understanding people by seeing their problems, but something also seemed wrong about it as well. I didn’t have any other way to understand people given that the entirety of my training in psychology was, indeed, on what is wrong with people. Fast forward 4 years of graduate school in Iowa City into my first real job as a psychologist working for a psychiatrist in Council Bluffs, IA. Again, I learned from Dr. Rassekh, the psychiatrist for whom I worked, that the only way of understanding and categorizing people was by what was wrong with them. He was, indeed, brilliant in his diagnostic capacities, like spotting a guy in the lobby who he was convinced had a paranoid personality disorder without ever actually listening to him.
Fast forward again into my own practice that developed just a year after working for Dr. Rassekh, and then a couple years in. I had a thriving practice at that time, so much so that I hired several part-time therapists and now called my practice Midlands Psychological Associates, the name we have retained for nearly 50 years. One of these therapists went to a conference where he was introduced to the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), and he talked about this test as possibly valuable. The MBTI changed my perspective drastically. I immediately learned not only that I was “extraverted,” having thought that everyone should be, but I learned that it was equally valuable to be introverted, however hard that was at the time for me to understand. And the MBTI also had other categories of understanding people. Importantly, the MBTI looked at personality, not pathology; what is right about people, not what was wrong with them. The journey of understanding myself and people continued with a new perspective: what is right with people.
About the time that I became familiar with the MBTI, I started studying other ways of understanding people. This brought me to several personality theorists, some 2500 years old, like the Greek philosopher/psychologist Galen, and the others who followed him. I also was simultaneously looking at the work of people who found ways to integrate personality and pathology, like the outstanding psychotherapist, Dick Olney, who “reframed” Alexander Lowen’s fine work of “body diagnosis” into friendlier terms. As I looked at the patients I was seeing as well as looking at myself and my friends and family, I saw what became the cornerstone of what came to be the temperament system I created and have used for 40 years. I saw my daughter and then a patient by the name of Kevin who seemed to share some characteristics of living. I also noticed that I also had many of these characteristics, which seemed to center around playing. My daughter, Krissie, loved to play; Kevin loved to play, and I certainly loved to play. So I came up with the first of what became four temperaments, the player personality, and wrote a bit about people who were players. Many people, including my daughter whom I had previously thought of as “suffering” from ADHD, now seemed more accurately understood as players. I began to think of how I could help players be true to themselves but also engage society successfully, something that appeared to be a real challenge.
From seeing players as a rather distinct group, I put together a system of understanding people of different temperaments, namely four temperaments. I constructed a test called the Johnson Temperament Indicator (JTI) and began to use it regularly in my testing package, along with the MBTI and a bunch of other tests. We still use these tests, which patients first complain about having to spend 4 hours finishing only to see the great value of understanding themselves, namely “what is right about them.” While players, and people of all personality types and temperaments, are inclined to some kind of problems, I didn’t see people with problems first, but problems that often resulted from not finding ways to be who they are in meaningful, helpful, and valuable ways. Enough history, abbreviated as it may be, boring as it may be.
In following blogs l will discuss my four temperaments that I now see in people. While no one falls perfectly into any one of these boxes, most people find themselves relatively secure in one of them or perhaps two of them. The temperaments are:
- Player
- Lover
- Caretaker
- Analyst
The typical characteristics of these people are:
- Players: seek experience, often excitement. They bring fun to live.
- Lovers: seek human connections. They bring sacrifice to live.
- Caretakers: protect property. They bring safety to life.
- Analysts: seek meaning. They bring understanding to life.
Consider how you might fit into one or more of these temperaments. Then follow us as we unpack these four looking at strengths, possibilities, trials, and challenges of each.
Further Reading
Bates, E. and Wachs, T. (eds.) (2002). Temperament: individual differences at the interface of biology and behavior. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
Keisey, D. and Bates, M. (1978). Please understand me: character and temperament types. Del Mar, CA: Prometheus Nemesis Books.
Johnson, R. (1985). The Johnson Temperament Indicator (test). Available in our office.
Johnson, R. and Brock, D. (2018). Watch your temperament. Prepublication manuscript available in our office.
Ward, R.M. (1988). Blending temperaments: improving relationships—yours and others. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker.