Character and Characterology

CHARACTER AND CHARACTEROLOGY. - According to P. Lersch, character can be defined as a complex of qualities and particular forms that reveal themselves persistently in the life of the individual, imprinting upon him a personal stamp that can be conceptually defined. R. Le Senne considers character "the ensemble of congenital dispositions that form the mental skeleton of a man" (op. cit., see bibl., p. 9); to it he opposes personality, which comprises character plus all those elements acquired in the course of life that molded it and specified it in the particular manner in act, and furthermore the synthetic orientation of such elements. Between the two is the Ego, an active and free center, which could have and still could specify the character into a different personality.

Among the dispositions of an individual constituting the character, there exist relations of reciprocal interpenetration (integration) and of subordination (structure), whereby the unity of the character is not to be understood as derived from a sum of individual parts, but as an organic whole in which the individual elements acquire a particular meaning by the very fact of being 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 (see BIOTYPOLOGY) which would have the merit of being more adherent to the etymological value and common usage of the terms adopted. According to it, the word "indole" is proposed for the neuro-psychological "native state" that constitutes, in Le Senne's expression, the "skeleton" upon which the individual's true character will develop, rich in elements extrinsic to the physical organism, produced by the work of the environment and the educator and by the self-education that each person carries out upon himself.

General characterology is the psychological discipline that deals with character (or indole) in its manner of being and acting connected to the individual organic substrate, in the reality in which it is immersed; special characterology studies more particular problems, such as the modalities of individual characters, and defines the notes according to which individuals differ from one another. Systematic characterology or typology aims to group together individuals who present in common a set of particular characteristics.

The problems treated by characterology can be distinguished into 6 general categories:

1) Problems that refer directly to the fundamental qualities that mark individual characters and to the way in which they organize themselves in the individual; a study, therefore, whose object is the structure of character. 2) Problems regarding "types," that is, the most significant forms assumed by the human character, to which individual subjects are then approximated. The typological problem is a natural consequence of the characterological problem, insofar as science has the task of reducing the complexity of empirical phenomena to a synthesis as simple as possible and therefore seeks to fix in the individual case those qualities that may then permit an approximation to other analogous cases. The concept of type in characterology means nothing other than a generalization of structural qualities and personal marks that distinguish the individual. 3) The third group of problems: the formation of character (genetics) and the importance in it that belongs to hereditary factors, operating on the subject even before birth (endogenous factors), and to factors that act upon him in the post-natal period (exogenous factors). The ensemble of endogenous factors is usually called "psychic constitution," a presupposed element in the development of the individual; the ensemble of exogenous factors is called "environment" and is represented by what the subject encounters in his life (education, social and family environment, country of belonging, etc.). 4) From the problem of genesis is to be distinguished that of the development of character, regarding its variations in the successive phases of life (infancy, childhood, adolescence, puberty, youth, maturity, old age), each of which imprints upon the subject's character particular marks, sometimes so dominant that we must ask ourselves whether such qualities depend on the individuality of the person or on the age at which he finds himself, in the case in which they will disappear with the passage to successive ages of life. 5) Another order of problems is that regarding diagnosis, a not easy task and one requiring considerable training, since one must work back from directly revealed data to an intimate nucleus of affections and intentions that is often of very complex interpretation. 6) The last task of the science of character: casuistry, that is, the collection and clinical and scientific elaboration of individual cases.

Characterology as an autonomous science is relatively recent: the first systematic attempts date back to the end of the European war of 1914-18, chiefly through the work of German psychologists and psychiatrists — Kretschmer, Kroh, Ach — and of philosophers: Klages, Spranger, Le Senne. Even before Kretschmer, the Italian constitutionalist school of De Giovanni, continued by Viola, had given a precise classification of the different constitutions in relation especially to the typical morbid pictures most frequently corresponding to them. The school of Pende, also, referring in particular to the activity of the glands of internal secretion, has notably contributed to clarifying the problem of psychological typology.

Notable importance among the moderns is held by Spranger, founder of a human typology based on exclusively psychological characters, and by the Groningen school of G. Heymans and E. Wiersma, which has the merit of having attempted the first organic systematization in the field of character. The documents collected by the two aforementioned psychologists can be divided into two great categories: the first biographical, the other more properly statistical; they constitute even today the most important source of information available to the science of character.

The biographical inquiry selected, in biographies, the peculiar elements of the character of 110 persons of different nationality, profession, and sex, both in the field of historical figures and in that of criminals. The persons studied were distributed among the different categories of the classification. The statistical inquiry, on the other hand, was conducted on 2500 persons of various sex and age, with the method of special questionnaires that aim, through a long series of questions, at the subject's manner of behaving with regard to movement and activities, intelligence, organic and psychological inclinations, and the characteristics of affectivity.

According to these authors, a true understanding of character can take place only when one has previously grasped in objective form the meaning of the relations among psychic activities: a meaning that is had only when they are considered as members of a whole. The science itself must then collect the data of experience with an organic method and not limit itself to fortuitous observations, as often happens in empirical observation.

But even in the field of character, practical and scientific knowledge must be distinguished but not opposed, and, according to Jaspers, no precise boundary is to be found between them. In this sense, characterology, within its objective limits, reveals to us how much congenital determinism places in each of us, yet without claiming to predetermine individual complication, given that the latter emanates from the encounter between character and individual freedom and leaves aside the values that transcend the individual (Le Senne).

Rightly understood, and even with the limits deriving from numerous contradictions on the theoretical plane, characterology has demonstrated, in these years of progressive elaboration, various motives of individual and social interest, while its present developments allow us to consider it in a phase of positive evolution.

Enrico Fulchignoni

EDUCATION OF CHARACTER

In pedagogy the term character can be understood in two senses. In the broad and more universal sense, as the predominant orientation of man's will, his particular way of willing and acting; in this sense, every man has his own character. In a stricter sense, as the habit of acting according to firm basic principles, furnished by the intellect, adhering to them so tenaciously as to produce the coherence of all volitions and actions. A man of character will therefore be one who possesses this property of the will, of adhering to the practical principles laid down by reason.

The fundamental note of character is therefore given by interior unity, by constancy and decision; and the principal element, above the temperament deriving from heredity and from physical and physiological circumstances, which may have acted upon the organic constitution, and above the psychic influence exercised by the social environment in which one lives, lies especially and very predominantly in the dispositions of the will; upon their quality and power depends the whole value of character.

1) Character is not immutable. - Some would like to defend the theory according to which character remains invariable throughout life, such as one has received it from nature, without the possibility of modifications on the part of any hetero-education or self-education. The theory, pushed to extremes, created the figure of the "born criminal" of C. Lombroso; an individual fatally destined to delinquency, despite all the contrary efforts attempted by education, by social repressions, by the internal resistances of the delinquent himself. And in proof of this is adduced the common popular experience, which fashioned the proverb: "the wolf changes its coat, but not its vice," or the excuse "there is nothing to be done, that's how I am," or the pretext: "take me as I am, I cannot be different." Certainly one must admit that in the education of character one encounters insurmountable limits: every voluntary effort can be exercised only within the line and the limits of an innate disposition, and one can neither destroy nor substantially modify the original organic, psychophysical constitution. Even in this, however, a certain education can be exercised with good results. For innate dispositions are like so many materials offered to our activity; this will not be able to change the elementary possibilities contained in them, but it will be able to reject some, choose others, transform them and consolidate them into habits. In the field, for example, of affectivity (emotion, enthusiasm, aggressiveness, indifference, etc.), if the will cannot bring about modifications in their intimate depths, it can nevertheless apply them to different objects and thus avoid excesses or deviations and fill gaps.

2) Character has its plasticity. - Experience and consciousness demonstrate in many ways how character can be and in fact is modified by various factors: a) physiological: age, growth, regimen of life, physical exercises, climate; b) social: one always remains, in certain respects, a man of one's own time, country, family environment, profession; c) psychological: habits reinforce or inhibit instincts and can be superimposed upon other habits to the point of making them disappear; every idea is efficacious, has within itself a force that is not lost and exercises its influence; two persons of more or less similar temperament and intelligence will have very different characters according to the different principles that direct them: political, religious, economic, moral ideas, by which they are governed; every action leaves a trace that facilitates the subsequent action; self-control, which each one can impose upon himself, makes one master of his way of acting down to the most subtle nuances.

All this therefore forms the field in which educational activity can effectively unfold; and one can say that man is the maker of his own fortune, succeeds in transforming himself and can cooperate in transforming others; he can not only learn to direct toward good those forces susceptible, originally, of turning to evil, but also come to increase or diminish these very forces; to crush energies and impulses or to create them.

3) Means for the education of character. - From what has been said, it follows that four means are needed to educate character: a) to make the will strong, urging it to will always and strongly, and passing to the real and continuous execution of voluntary acts; b) to subject volitions to a stable and permanent maxim of conduct; volitions are not enough, however ready and intense, if they remain scattered and, so to speak, dependent on momentary and passing motives; rather a fixed maxim is needed, which forms the ideal to be kept always and constantly before one's eyes; c) this ideal, the higher it is, the more it will give energy and impetus; d) it must, however, always conform to the moral law.

To put these general means into practice, the following will serve: a) a profound and vigilant knowledge of oneself, which knows one's tendencies and inclinations, experiments and remedies to be applied, and really applies them; b) conquest of the capacity to vibrate inwardly to the greatest number of vibrations of others, so as to escape the one-sidedness that renders one obtuse to the understanding of many passions and many motives of human actions; c) the daily effort to progress in the battle against the inertia and laziness of nature and the love of comforts and letting oneself go with the tide down one's own slope; d) self-denial, which knows how to impose a "no" upon itself, even in the simplest things and those lawful in themselves, in order then to have the strength to repeat the "no," when otherwise one would go against the moral law; e) knowing how to grasp the value and efficacy of suffering, in its many forms. On the one hand suffering can lead to rebellion or at least to distrust and inaction; but on the other, whoever understands it well and exploits it can be led to constancy, to the spirit of decision, to heroism.

THE CATHOLIC RELIGION IN THE EDUCATION OF CHARACTER AND CHARACTEROLOGY

Without taking anything away from human means, the Catholic religion adds others to confirm and strengthen it; it: a) offers a very high ideal, teaching one to transform every action into a service of God the Creator; b) increases the worth of duty, because it makes one consider it a disposition of Providence and a means of expiation and reparation, as well as of the execution of a clear divine will; c) gives to every action the value of an act of apostolate for the advent and the greater extension of the "Kingdom of God"; d) grants Grace which strengthens nature and refreshes the energies of the will; e) offers the sacraments of Penance and Communion, which are: the first, a beacon of light; the second, a flame for the full valorization of one's own personality.

Celestino Testore