four-humours.ppt - human psychology course

four-humours.ppt

1. The Four Humours

2. The Four Humours
In Greek, Medieval, and Renaissance thought, the
traditional four elements form the basis for a theory
of medicine and later psychological typology
known as the four humours.
Each of the humours were associated with various
correspondences and particular physical and mental
characteristics, and could, moreover, be combined
for more complex personality types: (e.g. choleric-
sanguine, etc).
The result is a system that provides a quite
elaborate classification of types of personality.

3. The Four Humours and
Classical Thought
In classic times medicine
was equated with philosophy
and three Greek
philosophers
 Hippocrates 
(c.460 – 370 b.c.e.), Plato (427-348 b.c.e.) and
Aristotle (384-322 b.c.e.) contributed to the
vision of health, disease and the functions of the
body.
Although they had differences in general they
saw health as an equilibrium of the body as
determined by the four humors.
 

4. The Four Humours and
Classical Thought Cont’d…
Sap in plants and the blood in animals is the
fount of life. Other body fluids- phlegm, bile,
faeces, became visible in illness when the
balance is disturbed.
For instance, epilepsy, the sacred disease was
due to phlegm blocking the airways that caused
the body to struggle and convulse to free itself.
Mania was due to bile boiling in the brain. Black
bile was a late addition to disease theory and was
associated with melancholy."

5. The Four Humours
and Unani (Greek-derived Islamic
Medicine)
Unani 
is Arabic for
Ionian, which means
“Greek”.
It is a formal medicine that has been practiced
for 6,000 years.
Also known as “hikmat”, Unani Tibb Medicine
was developed by the Greek physician
Hippocrates from the medicine and traditions of
the ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia.
Hikmat is still practiced today among Muslims of
Xinjiang, China as a part of Uighur medicine in
India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.

6. The Four Humours
and Unani Cont’d
Unlike modern Western medicine, Hikmat does not hold to
mind-body dualism but is rooted in the understanding that
spiritual peace is essential for good health.
Unani medicine considers many factors in maintaining health
and divides the body in a number of ways to define this
wisdom.
 
The first way that Hikmat defines the body is to describe it in
terms of the four humors or
 
akhlaat: air, earth, fire and
water emanate from the liver forming a subtle network around
the body.
In healing, foods and herbs are also classified according to the
four humors.

7. The Four Humours
and Unani Cont’d
The four humors correspond to four bodily fluids: blood, phlegm, black
bile and yellow bile.
A typical diagnosis of a patient would take the balance of these humors
into consideration.
For instance, over-stimulation of wet-hot elements effects nervous
biochemical interactions within the body with glandular ramifications
within the blood.
A wet-cold over-stimulation also effects nervous biochemical
interactions but with ramifications for the relationship between the
muscular biochemical exchanges and the bloodstream such as diarrhea
and diabetes.
Excess black bile in the blood leads to heart palpitations and
constipation

Excess yellow bile leads to general weakness

8. The Four Humours in Reniassance
and Elizabethan Time
By this time the humours had become standardized as follows:
Humour Body
substance
produced
by
Element QualitiesComplexion and Body
type
Personality
Sanguine blood liver air hot and
moist
red-cheeked, corpulentamorous, happy, generous, optimistic,
irresponsible
Choleric yellow bilespleen fire hot and dryred-haired, thin violent, vengeful, short-tempered, ambitious
Phlegmaticphlegm lungs water cold and
moist
corpulent Sluggish, pallid, cowardly
Melancholicblack bile gall bladderearth cold and drysallow, thin Introspective, sentimental, gluttonous

9. It was though that each of the "humours" gave off vapors which ascended
to the brain; an individual's personal characteristics (physical, mental,
moral) were explained by his or her "temperament," or the state of that
person's "humours."
The perfect temperament resulted when no one of these humours
dominated. By 1600 it was common to use "humour" as a means of
classifying characters; knowledge of the humours is not only important to
understanding later medieval work, but essential to interpreting
Elizabethan drama

10. The Four Humours in the
Modern World
Rudolf Steiner, who derived a lot of his ideas from Graeco-
Medieval thought, not unsurprisingly incorporated the humours into
his overall synthesis, and he discusses the four temperaments.
These are associated with dominance of one or the other of the four
levels of self.
Choleric with the ego (which Steiner associates with "warmth",
hence "fire")
The Sanguine with the astral body
The Phlegmatic with the etheric body
The Melancholic with the physical body

11. The Four Humours in the
Modern World Cont’d…

The sequence is from most subtle
(fire, traditionally "spirit") to most
dense (earth, hence physical)
Elements.

Steiner's has had less
impact than Hans Eysenck
(1916-1997) who developed
the personality classification.

Eysenck took the two
gradations of extrovert-introvert
and stable-unstable, to come
up with four quadrants which
could be associated with the
classic four temperaments. Each
quadrant is also are further divided
by keywords, creating a 360ｰ
gradation as follows: