Let’s imagine a building with people inside; the doors are locked and the windows are shuttered. Four separate people at different times want to get in.
The first marches up and knocks loudly. No one answers. She pounds on the door and still gets no answer. As her fury rises, she decides to break one of the windows to get in. The second is lightly jogging by and notices the door. Always curious, she knocks. Getting no response, she looks away, notices a butterfly, and immediately pursues it. The third trudges up to the door and waits to see if someone opens it. Eventually, she sits down nearby and waits to see what will happen. The fourth, lost in her thoughts, looks up and sees the door; after weighing the possibilities, she knocks and backs off. When no one answers, she is convinced the people inside don’t want her inside; head lowered, she sadly walks away.
This story, which has many variations, serves as a way for us to understand the four temperaments and thus understand ourselves and others better. Galen of Pergamon (129 AD – c. 216) named these four temperaments choleric, sanguine, phlegmatic, melancholic. We can compare them to the four elements, choleric = fire, sanguine = air, phlegmatic = water, melancholic = earth.
Steiner found in his spiritual research that these four temperaments synthesize our incarnating spirit with its line of heredity. He says, “Temperament strikes a balance between the eternal and the ephemeral.” We each have all four temperaments, but one usually predominates over the other three and one is often barely evident. Mastering or balancing our temperaments is one of the many tasks that gives purpose to our lives.
Let’s see what Dr. Steiner has to say:
How does the spiritual-psychic stream, of which a human being forms a part through reincarnation, unite itself with the physical stream of heredity? The answer is that a synthesis must be achieved. When the two streams combine, each imparts something of its own quality to the other. In much the same way that blue and yellow combine to give green, the two streams in the human being combine to yield what is commonly known as temperament…
Cholerics come across as people who must always have their own way…
Sanguines surrender themselves in a certain sense to the constant and varied flow of images, sensations, and ideas…
Phlegmatic(s) are preoccupied with their own internal processes. They let external events run their course while their attention is directed inward…
Melancholics (experience pain that) continually wells up within them…
When we consider that the temperaments, each of which represents a mild imbalance, can degenerate into unhealthy extremes, we realize just how important this is… for in every temperament there lie two dangers of aberration, one great, one small.
One danger for young cholerics is that they will never learn to control their temper as they develop into maturity. That is the small danger. The greater is that they will become foolishly single-minded.
For the sanguine the lesser danger is flightiness; the greater is mania, induced by a constant stream of sensations.
The small danger for the phlegmatic is apathy; the greater is stupidity, dullness.
For the melancholic, insensitivity to anything other than personal pain is the small danger; the greater is insanity.
In light of all this it is clear that to guide the temperaments is one of life’s significant tasks… By filling ourselves with practical wisdom such as this, we learn to solve that basic riddle of life, the other person… Spiritual science makes it possible that when two souls meet and one demands love, the other offers it. If something else is demanded, that other thing is given. Through such true, living wisdom do we create the basis for society.
Excerpt from: The Four Temperaments, Lecture by Rudolf Steiner, Berlin, March 4, 1909.
I found this temperament chart on Pinterest. Click to enlarge. Sources are listed above.
Steiner gives specific guidance to teachers in the first Waldorf School with ways to recognize the temperament of a child and the methods that will be most effective in working with each one. For example, these teachers know that the choleric child needs to respect the teacher’s expertise while the sanguine child needs to love the teacher’s personality; that the melancholic child needs to know the teacher has experienced suffering and the phlegmatic child needs the help of friends to find things interesting. Waldorf teachers incorporate these principles in every aspect of their teaching.
If we go back to our story at the beginning, we will probably recognize the predominate temperament in ourselves and in the people we know. Understanding each other’s behaviors based on this significant underlying reality allows us to better communicate with each other and to better meet each other’s needs. We can also understand why natural leaders are often cholerics, why every social gathering needs at least one sanguine, why the calm heads in a crisis are often phlegmatics, and the people who will have thought with precision through every course of action are often melancholics.
We can gain a deeper understanding of the four temperaments in a simple Google search as the far-ranging strengths and weaknesses of each temperament cannot be included here. You can also listen to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pG8AihZyOlg where you will find the excerpted lecture above in full.