William Sheldon : Traits Defining "Cerebrotonia"

Extracts from :

William Sheldon

The Varieties Of Temperament

(1942)

Traits Defining the Third Component (Cerebrotonia)

C-1. Restraint in Posture and Movement, Tightness.

Painful tenseness and restraint can be seen all over the body. All of the expressive movements are held in check, like horses under close rein. The body as a whole is carried stiffly, and there is the suggestion of a shrinking tendency as if the person were in too strong a light and were trying to pull back into the shadows. The lips are tight, there is strain about the bridge of the nose, and throughout the face an apprehensive tenseness is seen. Hands are often clenched and they are usually kept out of sight as much as possible, Cerebrotonics like to keep their overcoats or topcoats on during an interview, and their hands in the pockets. In the sitting posture, one leg frequently has a tendency to wind tightly about the other. The favorite posture is a kyphotic, round-shouldered one, both in standing and in sitting. In the sitting position the thighs are flexed when possible, as if the individual were trying to fold himself up to become less conspicuous. The walk suggests treading on eggs, or an attempt to move noiselessly in order not to attract attention.

C-3. Overly Fast Reactions.

Reaction time is conspicuously fast. Social reactions are so fast that the individual tends to become flustered and tangled up in his own reactions. He responds too rapidly (for effective adaptation) to the average person and to the usual social situation. Verbal stumblings, facial overresponses, and embarrassed false starts at conversation and at gestures of politeness all demonstrate this trait. The individual figuratively trips over himself, especially when attempting to adapt to a slow, complacent, self-sufficient personality. There is quick blushing and blanching, and often there is a peculiar confusion and embarrassment on the occasion of a sudden meeting. The pulse rate increases markedly upon slight provocation. Such a person responds too quickly in crises, becomes too tense and suffers from "buck fever." This is particularly the case in competitive events of all sorts. (...)

It is hard for a cerebrotonic to wait for anything, even his dinner. He becomes hungry with a sudden pang. His internal demands are sudden, acute, and sometimes poorly sustained. When confronted with obstacles he often represses these demands altogether, or if a little somatotonia is present in him, without sufficient balancing viscerotonia, he may present a jagged, irregular, impatient pattern of expression. '

Note: This trait is indicated, rather than measured, by the common experiments of the psychological laboratory on reaction time. The so-called "startle response" appears to constitute one of the best indicators. A person with this trait predominant responds with extreme quickness to any sudden disturbance or noise. Also both verbal and motor reactions are fast. The trait is well shown by measurements of speed of eye movements in reading. From the standpoint of effective social adaptation the overly fast reaction is probably a more serious stumbling block than the overly slow reaction of viscerotonia. The quick-reacting cerebrotonic becomes easily confused. People with the C-3 trait predominant are often "misunderstood," and they are sometimes badly bullied, especially by well-meaning friends and relatives who try to normalize them. It is quite possible, for example, that to force a cerebrotonic to sit through a prolonged, deliberate meal may work as much physiological and psychological harm upon him as would be caused by forcing a viscerotonic to eat his meal in five minutes.

C-4. Love of Privacy.

There is a profound and urgent need of privacy. The individual manifesting this trait predominantly needs to be alone, out of reach of social stimulation during a large proportion of his time, as a storage battery needs periodically to be recharged. For very nearly all of the time, the extreme cerebrotonic would like to be alone, or cut off from all save one or two intimate associates. Cerebrotonia communes with itself, and is mentally self-sufficient. It seems to live a mentally intensive (rather than extensive) life.

What it experiences needs to be assimilated, to be fitted into what has gone before. Happiness and mental health appear to be dependent upon this assimilative process, which can be carried on only in relative privacy. The love of privacy appears therefore to be as native and as primary in cerebrotonia as love of eating and sociophilia in viscerotonia. In gauging this trait, ignore any superficial statement of verbal attitude. Most people say they like to be alone. (...)

In connection with this trait, one point of interest to the psychological or clinical consultant might be added. Many cerebrotonic people who have begun to show signs of a schizoid cerebrosis and other indications of too great strain, will respond to solitude better than to any other therapy. Try particularly to protect such people from a viscerotonically or somatotonically inclined psychiatrist. It is also worth remembering that parents are not always careful to protect cerebrotonic children from summer camps, progressive schools, and other well-intended institutions of professionalized somatotonia. A child suffering from the result of Such misanthropy can often be helped greatly by solitude.

C-5. Mental Overintensity, Hyperattentionality, Apprehensiveness.

The trait of overawareness. There is a low threshold of attention, and consequently a mental overresponsiveness and often an apprehensiveness concerning everything. The attentional focus is extremely active and labile. The individual has sharp eyes and ears. He misses nothing. In particular he fails to miss much which, from the standpoint of his immediate adaptation to human society as it is, he might do well to miss. In a psychological sense he is naked to his environment, overexposed, oversensitized. He is therefore singularly vulnerable to overstimulation. He lacks insulation. His case suggests that of a man trying to attend to several conversations simultaneously.

Under varying circumstances the trait is expressed as excessive alertness, vexed confusion, strained attentive effort, apprehensiveness. The sense of impending disaster often lurks in the mind of such a person throughout a long lifetime. There is an incessant sense of insecurity. The individual usually shows fear and dislike of any kind of risk.

C-6. Secretiveness of Feeling. Emotional Restraint.

This is the tight-lipped charactenstic. The individual does his mental suffering in silence. He will not "let go" and reveal his emotions or feelings in the presence of others. External expression of feeling is powerfully inhibited, although there may be great intensity of

feeling. In high cerebrotonia, to show feeling is like public exposure of the naked body.

Signs of emotional weakness are choked back as if subject to great shame. Similarly there is usually a tight checking of outward demonstration of joy and of the pleasant emotions. These people experience intense feeling, but they remain secretive about it.

Note: This trait is sometimes an inconvenient one to its possessor, for since feeling is not overtly displayed, the individual is frequently not given credit for the sympathy and kindness which he actually entertains. A really painful tragedy resides here, for the cerebrotonic himself usually does not understand why he is misunderstood. (...) The cerebrotonic usually does not think he is secretive of his feelings. He believes that he is merely careful not to be crudely obvious (and hence offensive). Yet in avoiding offense to his own kind he generally succeeds in giving offense to both somatotonics and viscerotonics, who prefer "an open, honest display and plain dealing." Like most other human difficulties, this resolves itself into a language problem. Cerebrotonia speaks an intensive, subtle, subjective language, and the cerebrotonic hates to be obvious, just as he hates to be naked.

C-8. Sociophobia.

Dislike of being socially involved. Antithesis to conviviality. The individual avoids and deeply distrusts social gatherings. He is strained, distressed and uncomfortable in the face of any social relationship, especially those of a temporary or superficial nature. The concept of general good fellowship and of a comradeship extending beyond a few intimates is foreign to him. He hates to be recognized and hailed, for he is usually "caught absent-minded." He shrinks away from social contacts, particularly from new ones. In contrast to the insatiable viscerotonic appetite for company and for people, this person retreats from company as from physical pain. He becomes tightened up and confused when thrown into a social situation, and is overwhelmed by self-consciousness. (...)

C-12. Unpredictability of Attitude and Feeling.

Lack of uniformity in behavior and outlook. Attitudes are subject to sudden and disconcerting change. The individual tends not to respond to social stimulation in the expected manner. His attitudes seem to be subject more to internal than to external control. He seems to be able to change his mind abruptly, and suddenly to adapt all his feelings and attitudes to the new orientation. Such a change frequently bewilders other, less cerebrotonic people who may have become emotionally entangled with the individual. The trait gives rise to a conspicuous mental and emotional versatility, but so great a changeableness in external attitude often lends an instability or capriciousness to the cerebrotonic personality which may become profoundly disconcerting, and often leads to misunderstanding. Such people have a genius for being "misunderstood." This is the trait of being often called "a mystery."

C-17. Vertical Mental Cleavage, Introversion.

The characteristic of being mentally intensive, secretive and subjective, in sharp contrast with the broad mental extensiveness and objectivity of somatotonia, and with the open expression of feeling which marks viscerotonia. The cerebrotonic individual is primarily orientated toward, and in touch with, his own remoter awareness rather than with the outer scene. Reality to him is essentially and foremost what he dredges up out of his own mental cellars. The outward reality appears to be secondary. The principal business of consciousness is that of fitting or assimilating the incoming stream of external impressions to the more important store of what is already accumulated and assimilated. Adaptation or adjustment to the outward scene is therefore secondary, and in the face of the stress of overstimulation and confusion, outward adaptation is the first function to be abandoned.

The individual turns away from "reality," abandoning it somewhat as a captain might first unship the least valuable part of his cargo in a storm. The thing to be saved and protected at all costs is the continuity and integrity of the inner awareness. Such a person dissociates the outer, objective reality but remains in the closest touch with his own inward, subjective reality. Therefore a relatively less sharp separation is observed between his fully conscious attitudes and his dreaming, his phantasy life, and remoter desires.

Persons showing this trait strongly are difficult if not impossible to hypnotize. They are free from the "horizontal dissociation" ol somatotonia, but are prone to develop what we have called vertical dissociation. The mental cleavage seems to be an up and down or vertical one, leaving the manifest, immediate consciousness in close touch with deeper, latent consciousness, but shutting out awareness of some part of the objective scene which is spread out before the individual (figuratively in a horizontal plane). In cerebrotonia the vertical plane of consciousness remains intact, but the horizontal plane is broken (schizoid). Symptoms of this kind of vertical cleavage are absent-mindedness, daydreaming, procrastination, inability to make decisions, poor identifications of people and with people, and in pathology, schizoid manifestations.

When well educated, cerebrotonic people tend to develop a profound respect for words. This might almost be called a fear of words, in the sense that the term "fear of God" is commonly used. To the educated cerebrotonic mind the word tends to become a fine-edged tool, to be used with great caution and preciseness, if not with reverence. There is sharp differentiation between shades of a word's meaning, hence hesitation and caution with words. For such people it is very difficult to write letters. An "extravert," of either kind (viscerotonic or somatotonic), can usually dash off a dozen letters, while an "introvert" struggles with a single paragraph. (...)

C-20. Orientation toward the Later Periods of Life.

There is a primary longing for a later period of life, and a persistent conviction that greater happiness lies in the later decades, when the individual will be (he believes) relatively free from the inhibitory tenseness and emotional insecurity which seem so fearfully to thwart him in youth. Also, among academic or intellectually ambitious cerebrotonics there is a strong feeling that the best fulfillments of life lie in the intellectual maturation, and in the richer understanding and insight of later years.

Among such people the quest for "understanding," and for answers to some of the riddles of life, tends to become the primary quest. There is in any event a deep wish to be older, and an impatience with existence at the present stage of it. The pronounced cerebrotonic typically regards childhood as an essentially painful experience which he would under no circumstances wish to repeat (except for the purpose of doing something differently). Similarly youth, the period of highest physical vigor, is to him mainly a time of distraction and annoyance, of frustration, and of postponement. The idea is singularly persistent in cerebrotonic minds that childhood and youth are but periods of preparation — larval periods — pointing toward something more important which lies on beyond.

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Source :

William Sheldon - The Varieties Of Temperament

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