Friday, November 20, 2009

Early Representations of The Four Temperaments as a Personality Model


Richard Montgomery (author of the excellent book People Patterns - A Modern Guide to the Four Temperaments) suggests that the origins of the Four Temperaments can be identified earlier than the ancient Greeks, namely in the Bible, c.590BC, in the words of the Old Testament prophet Ezekiel, who refers (chapter 1, verse 10) to four faces of mankind, represented by four creatures which appeared from the mist:
"As for the likeness of their faces, they four had the face of a man, and the face of a lion, on the right side: and they four had the face of an ox on the left side; they four also had the face of an eagle." (from the Book of Ezekiel, chapter 1, verse 10)
Montgomery additionally attributes personality characteristics to each of the four faces, which he correlates to modern interpretations of the Four Temperaments and also to Hippocrates' ideas, compared below.

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