Historical approaches to personality

Temperaments  460 before christus was born people thought about the concept of differences in personality in human nature. Hippocrates was probally the first one: he wrote about the concept, that there are four temperaments, which are connected to different fluids in the body. Blood was the fluid of the sanguistic, who is happy but this reactions are easily changing. The phlegmatic type was connected to slime and is slow and has constant reactions, which are not that emotional. Someone who is angry was discribed as chloeric, with yellow bile. The last temperament was the melancholic, with black bile, it is slow and sad. Some years later in 160 Galen (Galenos of Pergamon) expanded Hippocrates model of the temperaments. The said there is the way the affect can be: strong or weak and fast or slow. Slow affects were the temperament type melancholic and plagmatic. And strong the coleric and melanancolic. Weak is for sanguistic and phlegmatic, fast affects are those of choleric and sanguistic. The fluids has to be balanced that a person is healthy. 1762 Kant did categorized those in feelings and temperaments. Feelings were singuistic persons (easily to recognize) and melancholic (stable). The temperaments accoriding to Kant were choleric (with strain) and phlegmatic (with relaxiation). Kretschmer wrote 1921 about a different catoraisation: leptosom, pyknic, athletic. He connected the body type with the personality traits. A leptosom person is thin and thinks a lot, a athletic on the other hand is muculaer, unrefracting and very focused on his looks. Someone who is pyknic is heavier and also melancholic and cozy. The soma types were also a way to connect body type to the personality. Sheldon epict 1942 three types: endomorph, mesomorph and ectomorph. For the evaluation he used very static methods: he determined objective traites and rated those in a scale from one to seven. In the end someone who is completly ectomorph has a seven on the ectomorph scale and one on the others. This way also mixed forms can be identifyed. A ectomorph is a private and withdrawn person, his primary organ is the brain (cerebrotony). A mesomorph is musculear and focused on this looks, competetive. His organ are the muscles (somatonony). The last type is the endomorph with the organ gut (viscerotony). He is relaxed and social.

history of the clinical approach
Modesty, vanity, cowardience and morality were used by Aristoteles in the year 360 before christus to characterize people. His pupil Theophrastos wrote a book in which he mentioned 30 types of personalitys.

The stoic Epiktet explained that serenity was a character trait, but could be changed by your individual thinking of the situation.

Mesmer discovered in 1781 first that magnetitismus and electricity can be used to treat the brain. He also used hythnoses in this therapy sessions.

statistical methods to messure personality
Lavater in 1775 spoke about the physiogomik: the correlation between charaacter and phsiological traits.

Gall invented 1824 the phrenology, where he messured the size and the different parts of the skull to identify personality.

Galton invented the statistical methods like the normal distribution and used questionaires.

The first real psychologist, Wundt mentioned that personality is a continuum and some trait are emotional and some are more stable. He said a person is never ill or healthy instead always something in between.

On top of that he parted the different sides who to messure personality. If you are having one or two traits and many induviduals it is the sience of correlation. In the case of many traits and one individual it is called psychographical. Many traits and many individuals is the sience of the variation. The last one is two or more individuals and more traits is the sience of comparation.

Other technics like lexical hythotheses and the factoranalyses were invented later on.