Many of the great minds of psychology, myself not included, were very preoccupied with classification, taxonomy, nocology, and especially the classification of various types of people. This is known as type theory. Type theory is any hypothetical proposition or principle for the grouping of people by kind of personality or by personality characteristics.
And so very early on, long before psychology had existed, there were the Greeks. The Greeks were always there. You can never get rid of them.
And one of the things they came up with is humoral theory, the theory of humors. And for 2,000 years, this theory held sway in medicine and in what you might charitably call proto-psychology, from about the 5th century before Christ to the 17th century after Christ.
And so it was the rise of the enlightenment and empiricism that gave the slip to humoral theory.
Anyhow, Humors theory said that there are four humors, four fluids, in the human body, and that the various degrees of these fluids, the various levels, determine your personality.
I will not go into it right now because I try to render this channel nonsense free.
Another person who was very preoccupied with classification of people was Jung.
There's the famous Jungian typology which I will discuss a bit later.
Of course, how can anyone talk about psychology or any topic in psychology without mentioning the inimitable Sigmund Freud?
Sigmund Freud came with a type theory of personalities, a classification, or a taxonomy of people. And he called it the libidinal types theory.
In classical psychoanalytic theory, it's a personality classification based on the distribution of libido.
Now, libido is not only sexual energy, sexual energy is eros, libido is the life force, the life force in the psyche.
Freud said that depending on how much libido you have and how this libido is distributed, you belong to one of three types.
There's the erotic type, where the libido is mainly embedded in the id. You're very impulsive. You give in to your urges and drives, and you, in generally, have fun.
So the main interest of the erotic type is in loving and being loved, which is a euphemism for having a lot of sex.
The obsessional type is when the libido is invested not in the id, but in the superego in the internal critic in the conscience the individual is dominated by this voice by this what we call today introject or internal object the individual inevitably becomes obsessive.
And finally there's the narcissistic type where the libido is primarily invested in the ego and the main interest is in self-preservation with little concern for others or for the dictates and advice of the superego.
This was a very early proposition by Sigmund Freud, and he gave up on it a bit later.
And of course you see the similarity between Sigmund Freud's libidinal types and the ancient Greeks' humoral theory, where the Greeks suggested that there are actual physical fluids within the body that ebb and flow.
Freud suggested that there is a kind of symbolic energy, a fluid-like energy, which he described as libido.
Again, because I'm not into nonsense, I will proceed.
And now we reach Jung, Freud's erstwhile disciple and later bitter rival.
Jungian typology has survived to this very day. There's a video on this channel dedicated to the MBTI system of personality classification and test. I recommend that you watch it.
Jungian typology was a theory of personality that classified individuals into types according to their attitudes, introversion, extroversion, and these are known as attitudinal types, and according to the dominant functions of the psyche, and these are known as the functional types.
So let's delve a bit deeper into this theory because this theory is again still being used, still being revered and studied.
Attitudinal types according to Carl Jung in analytic psychology, are two personality types defined by habitual extroversion on the one hand and a habitual introversion on the other hand. And attitudinal types are distinct from functional types.
There are four functional types, four personality types, based on the functions of the ego.
Jung identified these four functions, one of which typically dominates the conscious ego, while the others remain unconscious.
You see the similarities between this approach and the self-states psychology, or self-states school of psychology, to which I belong.
In the self-states schools of psychology, they are self-states, multiple self-states.
One of them is active, public-facing, interacts with the environment and manages life, and the other self-states are dormant, latent, waiting to be activated as the environment changes.
Similarly, Jung suggested that several ego functions at any given moment are dormant and latent and inactive because they're not relevant or responsive to the environment, and there's one ego function which is hyperactive, dominant takes over in order to respond to the environment in a way which should be self-efficacious.
And so the individuated person will have integrated all the functions into their conscious personality.
And what are these four functional types?
The feeling type, the thinking type, sensation type and intuitive type.
This is known as quaternity.
Again I will not go into it I'm just giving you an overview and a taste of the variety of personality type theories out there.
Now you've all heard probably of the type A personality.
It's a personality pattern characterized by chronic competitiveness, ambition, high levels of achievement motivation, impatience, and a distorted sense of time urgency, polyphasic activity, for example, multitasking, and aggressiveness and hostility.
And if this reminds you a lot of narcissists and psychopaths, you're right.
Most narcissists probably are type A personalities.
The entire array of traits and behaviors characterizing type A personality is connected also to bodily manifestations.
Although contrary to online nonsense and myths, there is no connection between cardiovascular health and type A personality.
There is a connection between type A personality and stress hormones and other bodily manifestations, type A feature in certain diseases more prominently because one of the characteristics of type A personalities is hostility.
And hostility does cause certain diseases including certain heart diseases.
So there is some form of pathogenesis, but there is no correlation.
We are not quite sure why, but it seems that the hostility element in type A personality predisposes an individual to develop certain metabolic diseases and cardiovascular diseases, and then whether he goes on to develop them or not, depends on other factors such as lifestyle and exercise and so on so forth.
Be that as it may, type A personalities are overrepresented in terms of accomplishment in professions such as politics, such as medicine, and in areas of life and vocations which require deep commitment, ambition and being driven.
Type A personality of course is contrasted with type B personality.
They were first outlined in the 1970s by US physicians, Meyer Friedman and Ray Rosenman. Type B personality is a personality pattern which is characterized by low levels of competitiveness and frustration.
This is an easygoing approach, a lack of aggressiveness, no hostility, in short, a nice person, or maybe just a people-pleaser.
Type B individuals don't feel the need to prove that they are superior. They are not urged to kind of demonstrate ostentatiously their abilities or their possessions.
And so they are the exact opposite of type A.
But there are other types of personality which are much less well known.
For example, type D, as in David, type D personality. That is a distressed personality.
There's a high degree of negative affectivity, also known as negativistic attitude. There used to be a personality disorder known as negativistic personality disorder, long since removed from the DSM.
These kind of people, type D, they have a tendency to experience negative emotions and mostly negative emotions. They have serious difficulty to experience positive emotions.
The connection between narcissism and depression is very well established, by the way.
Type D personalities have a conscious tendency to suppress self-expression in social interaction.
In other words, they're socially inhibited. Some of them are even socially shy or socially anxious.
So type D personalities, when and if they're narcissists, they tend to become covert narcissists.
There's accumulating evidence that suggests that type D individuals are at increased risk of developing metabolic disorders, heart disease, and other chronic medical conditions.
These were studies conducted by the Belgian medical psychologist, Johan Denollet, actually, to pronounce it correctly.
And then there's type T, as in time, type T personality. It's a person whose personality is characterized by the need to seek situations that cause or increase risk, arousal, stimulation, thrills and adrenaline rush.
These novelty and risk seekers are also known as psychopaths. Or let's put it this way, many type T personality people are psychopaths, and all psychopaths are type T personality.
Of course, there are type T personality people who are not psychopaths, but the correlation is very high, exactly like the correlation between type A and narcissism.
So I gave you an overview of some of the thinking in the field of type theory.
None of it is too rigorous, none of it is too well substantiated, but it's very appealing. It's comforting to be able to put people in drawers and classify them. It gives us the erroneous impression that we can make sense of the world and of other people, and we are in control.
This is very much a type A type of thinking.