CHARACTER and CHARACTEROLOGY. – According to P. Lersch, character may be defined as a complex of particular qualities and forms that persistently manifest themselves in the life of an individual, impressing upon him a personally definable conceptual imprint. R. Le Senne regards character as “the ensemble of congenital dispositions that form the mental skeleton of a man” (op. cit., V. BIBLICA., p. 9); he contrasts it with personality, which includes character plus all those acquired elements that shape and specify it in a particular manner, as well as the synthetic orientation of such elements. Between the two stands the I, the active and free center that could have, or still may, specify character into a different personality.
Among an individual’s dispositions that constitute character, there are relationships of reciprocal interpenetration (integration) and of subordination (structure), so that the unity of character is not to be understood as deriving from a sum of individual parts, but as an organic whole in which the individual elements acquire a particular significance precisely because they are incorporated into a higher unity.
While the content of the various concepts of character and personality set forth above remains firm, a different nomenclature has been proposed (v. BIOTIPOLOGIA) that would have the merit of being more closely aligned with the etymological value and common usage of the terms adopted. According to this proposal, the word indole is used to denote the “native” neuro-psychological state that, in the expression of Le Senne, constitutes the “skeleton” upon which the true character of the individual will develop—rich in elements extrinsic to the physical organism, produced by the work of the environment and of the educator, and by the self-education that each person undertakes.
General characterology is the psychological discipline concerned with character (or indole) in the manner of being and acting linked to the individual’s organic foundation, within the reality in which it is immersed; special characterology studies more particular problems, such as the modalities of individual characters and defines the notes by which individuals differ from one another. Systematic characterology or typology aims to group together individuals who share a set of particular characteristics.
The problems addressed by characterology can be divided into six general categories:
1) Problems that refer directly to the fundamental qualities that mark individual characters and to the manner in which they are organized within the individual; thus, a study whose object is the structure of character.
2) Problems concerning “types,” that is, the most significant forms assumed by human character, to which individual subjects are then compared. The typological problem is a natural consequence of the characterological problem, inasmuch as science has the task of reducing the complexity of empirical phenomena to the simplest possible synthesis and thus seeks to identify in the individual case those qualities that may later allow comparison with other analogous cases. In characterology, the concept of “type” signifies nothing other than the generalization of structural qualities and personal traits that distinguish the individual.
3) A third group of problems concerns the formation of character (genetics) and the importance of hereditary factors, which act upon the subject even before birth (endogenous factors), and of factors that act upon him in the postnatal period (exogenous factors). The totality of endogenous factors is usually called “psychic constitution,” a presupposed element in the development of the individual; the totality of exogenous factors is called “environment” and is represented by everything the subject encounters in life (education, social and family environment, country of origin, etc.).
4) Distinct from the problem of genesis is that of the development of character, concerning its variations in successive phases of life (infancy, childhood, adolescence, puberty, youth, maturity, old age), each of which imprints particular marks upon the subject’s character, sometimes so dominant as to raise the question of whether such qualities depend on the individuality of the person or on the age at which they are found—qualities that may disappear as one passes through successive ages of life.
5) Another category of problems concerns diagnosis, a difficult task requiring considerable training, since one must ascend from directly revealed data to an intimate core of affects and intentions that are often highly complex to interpret.
6) The final task of the science of character is casuistry, namely the collection and clinical and scientific elaboration of individual cases.
Characterology as an autonomous science is relatively recent: the first systematic attempts date to the end of the European War of 1914–18, chiefly through the work of German psychologists and psychiatrists such as Kretschmer, Kroh, and Ach, and philosophers such as Klages, Spranger, and Le Senne. Even before Kretschmer, the Italian constitutionalist school of De Giovanni, continued by Viola, had provided a precise classification of different constitutions, especially in relation to the typical morbid pictures most frequently corresponding to them. The school of Pende, focusing in particular on the activity of the endocrine glands, also made a significant contribution to clarifying the problem of psychological typology.
Among modern figures, Spranger stands out for founding a typology of human character based exclusively on psychological traits, while the Groningen school of G. Heymans and E. Wiersma merits recognition for having attempted the first organic systematization in the field of characterology. The data collected by these two psychologists can be divided into two broad categories: the first biographical, the second more properly statistical; they still constitute the most important source of information available to the science of character.
The biographical inquiry analyzed the distinctive elements of character in the biographies of 110 people of diverse nationality, profession, and sex, both historical figures and criminals. The subjects studied were distributed across the various categories of the classification. The statistical inquiry, on the other hand, was conducted on 2,500 people of various sexes and ages, using a method of special questionnaires that, through a long series of questions, aimed to reveal the subject’s manner of behaving in relation to movement and activities, intelligence, organic and psychological inclinations, and characteristics of affectivity.
According to these authors, a true understanding of character can only occur when the sense of the relationships among psychic activities has first been grasped objectively—a sense that is achieved only when these activities are considered as members of a whole. Moreover, science must collect experiential data using an organic method and not limit itself to fortuitous observations, as often happens in empirical inquiry.
Yet even in the field of characterology, practical knowledge and scientific knowledge must be distinguished but not opposed, and, as Jaspers observes, no precise boundary exists between them. In this sense, characterology, within its objective limits, reveals what congenital determinism places in each of us, without claiming to predetermine individual complexity, since the latter arises from the encounter between character and individual freedom and does not concern itself with values that transcend the individual (Le Senne).
Properly understood, and despite the limits imposed by numerous theoretical contradictions, characterology has demonstrated, in these years of progressive development, various motives of individual and social interest, while its current advances allow us to regard it as being in a phase of positive evolution.