One of the reasons why our family home at Lentor had a sizable library of books was because my elder brother and myself were avid book buyers and readers. Funnily though, for myself I wasn’t in the habit of re-reading books.
That said, over the decades there’s been a couple of books that I’ve re-read at least several times. One of them is The First Man in Rome by Australian author Colleen McCullough—which I’ve blogged about a year ago before here—Citizen Soldiers by the late Professor Stephen Ambrose. A third book is, funnily, a social psychology book by Christian psychologist Dr. Tim LaHaye (right) on the Temperaments.
Ok; what’s this thing about temperaments according to LaHaye? Briefly it’s this idea that all of us are a blend of two basic character types with one of them being (at least) more dominant than the other. In the book, he goes on to discuss how a spirit-filled life can lead a person to display less of the weaknesses inherent in each character type while retaining its strengths.
I first read his work in 1988 I think, and found it so fascinating that over the next decade or so I bought copies of his book for friends. I’m not certain if the most recent revision of his book is available locally anymore. But Amazon has one edition of it here, though this edition is different from the one I bought in the 80s.
I’ve reread LaHaye’s book so many times now that the four character types are sort of fossilized in my head, and over the years whenever I meet new people and friends, I’m almost subconciously seeing what kind of temperament blend they’re in. It at least helps in understanding why people are they way they are, and more importantly, recognizing their strengths.
So what blend am I in? After reading the book in 1988, I figured that I was a Melancholy-Choleric based on the detailed descriptions LaHaye had. Now, while I was fairly certain I wasn’t really a Sanguine or a Phelgmatic, I wondered if there was a slight possibility I was a Choleric-Melancholy instead.
In any case, this idea of temperament theory came up with an MSN conversation with a friend I had just yesterday, after which I went about looking for an online test to see what temperament I really was. And I found one right here! The test isn’t especially user-friendly in design. But the result I got in my case was in sync with my initial finding 20 years ago. I am a Melancholy-Choleric or a 53%-30% mix haha!
My detailed results are here. Yea there’re tons of these online character type tests out there, but this one has been the one I follow over the years.:)
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