INDOLE (from ἰνδάλλωμα = “I appear,” “I show myself”). — It denotes the natural disposition, the particular neuropsychological “native state,” proper to each individual, which constitutes a first-rate element, a congenital framework upon which, through the work of the environment and education and the repetition of physiological and moral acts (habit, v.), the true character (Χαράσσο = “I engrave,” “I carve,” “I impress”) will develop, enriched by numerous additional and acquired elements. Indole is, in a very particular way, linked to the physical endocrine conditions, to the state of neurovegetative equilibrium, to the tension and reactivity of the systems of relational life (the muscular and central nervous systems), and to the individual’s natural affective and intellectual orientation; moreover, it is determined by hereditary and psychological factors of an unconscious or subconscious nature.
Because of the complexity and importance of its constituent elements and determining factors, the educator cannot neglect the study and knowledge of indole, given that it can make educational formation more or less easy or difficult in one sphere or another, or may require different methods of formation in different subjects. Likewise, when orienting the subject toward work or a profession and making practical use of him, due weight must be given to the natural tendencies intrinsically linked to indole. Besides varying personally according to the different individual types, a particular indole belongs to each period of life (v. ETÀ DELLA VITA), whence the need for special understanding and particular educational methods differing, for example, for a child, an adolescent, or a young person in full development.
Because of such differing physical, neuromuscular, and neuropsychological configuration, the individual tends toward prompt and rapid action (tachypragism) or toward belated and slow action (bradypragism), toward a rapid psychic reaction (tachypsychism) or, conversely, toward a slow one (bradypsychism); toward different aspects of emotional sensitivity (affective hyperesthesia or hypoesthesia), with a different orientation of the affective section of the psyche (thymopsyche), tending naturally toward serenity, cheerfulness, and optimism or, on the contrary, toward ill humor, sadness, and pessimism; toward readily entering into affective resonance with the environment (extroversion, expansiveness) or toward doing so with difficulty (introversion, withdrawal into oneself); or the individual is naturally inclined toward one passion or another, understood as the natural movement of the sensitive appetite. Similarly, the same occurs in the intellectual section of the psyche (noopsyche), whereby the predominance of a particular type of memory appears, whether merely mechanical or logical-conceptual; of an intelligence naturally inclined to be deductive, analytical, and logical, or rather inductive, synthetic, and imaginative; of energy and tenacity (sthenicity, hyperbulia) or weakness and lability (asthenicity, hypobulia) in volitional manifestations.
It is of great importance for the educator to bear in mind that, even at periods of life very close to one another, the particular features of indole may be entirely different, just as are those of bodily constitution and of the particular endocrine constellation. Thus, whereas in the period immediately preceding puberty there appears a phase of great excitability and lability, both of the emotional and intellectual faculties, with a prevailing tendency toward tachypsychism, intuition, and synthesis, immediately after the pubertal crisis a period of greater calm and reflectiveness begins, with a tendency toward analytical, deductive, and reasoning mental activity.
This complexity of factors and variety of forms of indole, ranging from those closest to normality, within the limits of fluctuating individual variability, to those crossing into abnormality, make the cooperation of the constitutional physician in the arduous work of education highly useful, and often absolutely necessary.