Historical Development
- See also Historical Development of Theories of the Four Temperaments
Keirsey became familiar with the work of Ernst Kretschmer and William Sheldon after WWII in the late 1940s. Keirsey developed the Temperament Sorter after being introduced to the MBTI in 1956. Tracing the idea of temperament back to the ancient Greeks, Keirsey developed a modern temperament theory in his books Please Understand Me (1978), Portraits of Temperament (1988), Presidential Temperament (1992), Please Understand Me II (1998), Brains and Careers (2008), and Personology (2010). The table below shows how Myers' and Keirsey's types correspond to other temperament theories or constructs, dating from ancient times to the present day.
| Date | Author | Artisan temperament | Guardian temperament | Idealist temperament | Rational temperament |
| c. 590 BC | Ezekiel's four living creatures | lion (bold) | ox (sturdy) | eagle (far-seeing) | man (independent) |
| c. 400 BC | Hippocrates' four humours | cheerful (blood) | somber (black bile) | enthusiastic (yellow bile) | calm (phlegm) |
| c. 340 BC | Plato's four characters | artistic (iconic) | sensible (pistic) | intuitive (noetic) | reasoning (dianoetic) |
| c. 325 BC | Aristotle's four sources of happiness | sensual (hedone) | material (propraietari) | ethical (ethikos) | logical (dialogike) |
| c. 185 AD | Irenaeus' four temperaments | spontaneous | historical | spiritual | scholarly |
| c. 190 | Galen's four temperaments | sanguine | melancholic | choleric | phlegmatic |
| c. 1550 | Paracelsus' four totem spirits | changeable salamanders | industrious gnomes | inspired nymphs | curious sylphs |
| c. 1905 | Adickes' four world views | innovative | traditional | doctrinaire | skeptical |
| c. 1912 | Dreikurs'/Adler's four mistaken goals | retaliation | service | recognition | power |
| c. 1914 | Spränger's four* value attitudes | artistic | economic | religious | theoretic |
| c. 1920 | Kretschmer's four character styles | manic (hypomanic) | depressive | oversensitive (hyperesthetic) | insensitive (anesthetic) |
| c. 1947 | Fromm's four orientations | exploitative | hoarding | receptive | marketing |
| c. 1958 | Myers' Jungian types | SP (sensing perceiving) | SJ (sensing judging) | NF (intuitive feeling) | NT (intuitive thinking) |
| c. 1978 | Keirsey/Bates four temperaments (old) | Dionysian (artful) | Epimethean (dutiful) | Apollonian (soulful) | Promethean (technological) |
| c. 1988 | Keirsey's four temperaments | Artisan | Guardian | Idealist | Rational |
| Keirsey, David (May 1, 1998) . Please Understand Me II: Temperament, Character, Intelligence (1st Ed. ed.). Prometheus Nemesis Book Co. ISBN 1-885705-02-6. | |||||
| Montgomery, Stephen (2002). People Patterns: A Modern Guide to the Four Temperaments (1st Ed. ed.). Archer Publications. p. 20. ISBN 1-885705-03-4. | |||||
| *Spränger was said to have six value attitudes, but Keirsey cites him as saying that the remaining two, "social" and "political", "pertained to all, and hence, were not distinguishing". In fact, "political" was a category containing both theoretic and artistic, and "social" contained economical and religious. | |||||
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