Since the beginning of time, man has wanted to know himself and others, using multiple strategies, some of them with more positive results than others..
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Trying to guess the character through the typology or constitution of people is not one of the oldest sciences that we know, on the contrary, we only have to go back to the beginning of the 20th century. But yes, other techniques had been tried before, many more years ago, Hippocrates studied our internal body composition and divided it into four basic elements or humors, whose proportion determined the human temperament. And not so long ago, when it was tried to find out the personality by looking at the features of the face, or even by checking the shape and structure of the skull..
Be that as it may, we have always been interested in knowing what we are like. Perhaps the question is why? Why this constant interest in self-knowledge. Perhaps we believed that in this way we could better understand our world, or perhaps this knowledge provides us with security by giving us a sense of "control" towards our surroundings, or simply out of mere curiosity, a quality deeply rooted in man..
Gregorio Marañón, the important Spanish physician and neurologist, made a very particular (and nowadays obsolete) analysis of human constitutions, relating them in turn to the endocrine system that he knew so well, to give a scientific foundation to these classical theories..
As we have already said, the foundations of contemporary constitutional theories come from the Greek physician Hippocrates (460-370 BC), considered the father of medicine. Drawing on a previous philosopher, Empedocles, he thought that human beings arise from the combination of four elements (air, earth, fire and water), represented in the form of four humors (blood, black bile, yellow bile and phlegm). Hippocrates observed the dependence of these four humors in the temperament of people and made a classification of people based on the predominance of these humors: a person with a sanguine temperament meant that it was determined by the predominance of blood, in the phlegmatic it predominated phlegm, the melancholic type was characterized by the greater presence of black bile, and the choleric temperament was that in which yellow bile predominated.
Galen (129-199), Roman physician, related the different humors with the temperament of people, and thought that these were the cause of diseases.
It was in Greek times that the first attempts to classify individuals according to their constitution appeared, known as "Constitutionalist Theories of Personality".
Ernst Kretschmer, a German neurologist and psychiatrist, was an author who caused a great development in the typology of the constitution at the beginning of the 20th century. He proposed three fundamental classes of body morphology: the picnic with a medium height, a broad face, a strong neck and a rounded chest, the athletic with a higher than average height, strong shoulders and a muscular neck, and the asthenic or leptosomatic rather thin, slender, with angular features and dry, anemic skin. Each of these physical aspects was related to different psychological characteristics.
The German school had a great impact on the studies of Gregorio Marañón. Kretschmer has already pointed out that each of these bodily structures is based on a unitary endocrine formula, a unique chemical structure, of which the individuality of man is the product, both bodily and psychic..
Another school of great importance in the investigations of Marañón was the Italian one with Viola and Pende. Viola is based on anthropometric descriptions, including physiological aspects of the individual. Pende takes up Viola's idea that metabolic processes are important to differentiate human temperament and contributed the idea of the existence of a certain association between morphological and metabolic habit, therefore including the endocrine system in constitutional study.
Later Eysenk defined three types of personality dimensions: extraversion-introversion, emotional stability (neuroticization) and psychoticism. And he orders the various types of personality grouping them according to the classical characterological types indicated by Greek doctrine: melancholic, choleric, phlegmatic and sanguine, according to the opposite poles of stability-instability and of extroversion-introversion. In this way, it is indicated that the Hippocratic and Galenic institutions were not so wrong, and that organic humors play an important role in determining the different types of personality, in addition, it is currently known that one of the most important contents of those humors are the hormones.
The important influence of hormones on behavior was already known in ancient times, so it was to be expected that the endocrine system was one of the main ones at the time of basing constitutional theories on human temperamental tendencies..
For Marañón, the constitution is not a rigid concept, but an "elastic" one, modifiable to a certain extent by environmental influences. In his book "Endocrine Gynecology" he already speaks of constitutional tendencies, summarizing it in the phrase: "the constitution, then, marks a tendency, but does not impose a behavior".
According to his endocrinological theory, the general morphology of the human figure will be, to a large extent, conditioned by the endocrine system. Hormones are closely related to the nervous system and act in two ways from a clinical point of view: the hormones of the endocrine gland fulfill a specific function, but on the other hand the hormones of all the glands act together to regulate major processes of life: growth, metabolism and sexuality.
These same hormones, therefore, act on neuromuscular excitability, affectivity and psychic rhythm, and largely shape the person's temperament..
Marañón was not a professional typologist, but he describes a series of points that the clinician must focus on in order to make a general appreciation of the morphology. These points are the following: height, muscle development, development of sexual characteristics, fat distribution, hair and eye color, and skin tone..
He makes a classification based on Kretschmerian ideas, which are published in his book "Manual of endocrine diseases and metabolism" in 1939. On the one hand, he classifies normal constitutions and on the other, abnormal or dysplastic constitutions..
Within the normal constitutions, it makes a division of three types:
On the other hand, he defines a less frequent group of typologies that he calls abnormal constitutions, dividing them into:
Marañón makes a particular analysis of female typologies, given that according to what he says, the morphological types admitted up to now create difficulties when classifying women, because in his opinion they are "types in evolution, not stable", as it is the male.
For this reason and based on this character of its evolution, Marañón designates the constitutional types of women with constitution titles I, II and III.
For Gregorio Marañón, a woman's sexual life will be conditioned by her previous sexual constitution. Analyze sexual instincts, matching them with the sexual characteristics of women, such as sexual attraction and orgasm. The latter describes it as a late and non-constant appearance in women, while it would be precocious and mandatory in men. It emphasizes that women do not need orgasm to fulfill their procreative function (men do). This statement by Marañón was then interpreted as that frigidity was physiological in women, causing great protests. But one truth remains: an anorgasmic male is sterile, while a female is not. Marañón had the courage to say so.
Marañón arises the problem of the evolutionary dimension of the constitution, the organism evolves and with it also the temperament. His theory is based on the following: if morphology and temperament depend largely on the function of the internal secretory glands (non-fixed factors), insofar as they vary by the normal course of evolution of the individual or by Pathological influences will result in transformations of both the morphology of the person and their temperament.
From a general point of view, all individuals will evolve morphologically the same, from hypoplastic to asthenic and from asthenic to picnic ("happiness curve"). At the same time, from a sexual point of view, he attributes the asthenic constitution as that of the woman and the picnic that of the man. This sexual distinction Marañón deduces from the general evolutionary one, since femininity represents an intermediate phase of evolution and therefore has a youthful tone..
He also adds a qualification to this theory: when the morphological types are very well defined, when the hypoplastic, asthenic or picnic features are very marked, these subjects will retain the great general line they possessed throughout life. But in most human beings the evolution, albeit tenuous, of the three types occurs through age.
At the same time, the initially concentrated, arbitrary and rebellious temperament of the early years also evolves towards a more conciliatory temperament, with more conservative inclinations of the adult male.
On the other hand, in women, defined by Marañón as an intermediate organism between children and men, their evolution will be different but at the same time very explicit. She will go, both in her constitution and in her temperament, from a pubertal asthenia during the thirty to thirty-five years that sexual life lasts, to a clear virilization in the climacteric. Man, on the other hand, considered as a more fixed, terminal stage, evolution preserves through the inevitable changes, much more permanent the essential traits of his personality. For this reason, it is more difficult for women than for men to match morphology to known constitutional types. Constitution and sex are therefore in intimate relationship.
For Marañón, the masculine and the feminine are not strictly opposite values, but rather successive degrees in the development of a single function. He finds in Darwin the origin of this thought, for him there is a general theory of biological evolution, but a parallel evolution of sex is superimposed on it, which is necessary for reproduction and therefore for Darwinian evolution to be possible. Marañón says that sexuality traits, sexual behaviors and biotypes change throughout life. He discovers that two intersex endocrine crises occur at the time of male puberty and female climacteric, which is why he calls both critical ages.
In male puberty, before reaching full virility, the adolescent goes through an obligatory period of femininity. When he reaches thirteen or fourteen years of age, he begins a sketch of femininity that imprints his stamp on the morphology and psychology of the boy. A few years later, around sixteen or seventeen, the definitive virility emerges. Today we know the relative increase in estrogens in this phase, but Marañón only saw the external features: the boy's feminine tendency before he became a man, his not yet oriented sexual tendencies, and his homosexual games with schoolmates..
None of this takes place in female puberty, as it is passed from girl to woman in a gradual non-intersex transition. The woman wakes up slowly and in a gentle and continuous way in the girl. But on the other hand, when reaching the climacteric, a clear virile tendency appears in mature women, a physiological transition from all female to male. Today it is known that ovarian androgens accumulate in the peripheral circulation, causing virilloid tendencies that are very frequent in women of this age..
There are thus, according to Marañón, two critical ages, that of the man in puberty and that of the woman in the climacteric. On the other hand, female puberty and male andropause would be smooth transitions, one upon sexual awakening and the other upon turning off, both without conflicts..
The historical antecedents of the work of Gregorio Marañón are found fundamentally in the German and Italian schools, which incline him to approach the subject of personality with the study of the hormonal involvement in its components. According to Marañón, the endocrine gland is the one that most influences the temperament and personality of the individual.
There is an evolutionary dimension to the human constitution and temperament, which is different between men and women. In males, this morphological evolution is quite progressive until reaching a rather picnic final typology, while in females the evolution is much more abrupt when reaching menopause, maintaining until then a greater stability in its characters..
Gregorio Marañón did a great job of constitutional study, but they are currently obsolete. Even so, it determined a part (certainly important) in the future study of human psychology.
Regarding the classification that it carries out on women, taking into account the time in which Gregorio Marañón lived, it was surely very influenced by the cultural conception of women at that time. Until relatively recently, women here in Spain had no social power and their role was practically reduced to having children and caring for them as well as the home. In the study carried out by Marañón, this differentiating concept of women compared to men is reflected. Perhaps that is why to date there had not even been previous studies on them.
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