Story of Psychology - Morton Hunt [220]
In the early years of this century, body-personality theory took on the look of science when Ernst Kretschmer (1888–1964), a German psychiatrist who worked in several mental hospitals in southern Germany, claimed he had found a relation between patients’ physiques and their personalities and mental states. Patients who were short-limbed, round of face, and thickset, he said, tended to have mood fluctuations and to be either very elated or very depressed; they were manic depressives. Those who were long-limbed, thin-faced, and slender tended to be introverted, shy, cold, and antisocial; they were schizophrenics. Those who had balanced physiques and muscle development were energetic, aggressive, and cheerful; they had other mental ailments.68
Kretschmer believed that both the body shapes and the personality types or mental states were produced by hormonal secretions. His theory, advanced in 1921 in Körperbau und Charakter (the English edition is called Physique and Character), attracted much favorable attention because it seemed to lend scientific support to ancient tradition. But other scientists poked holes in Kretschmer’s theory. Many people, they noted, do not fit neatly into any of the three categories—short, fat people often have personalities that should go with being tall and thin, and tall, thin people often behave like athletic types. Moreover, Kretschmer’s sample was skewed. Hospitalized schizophrenics are younger, on the average, than hospitalized manic depressives, and this alone might account for much of the difference he found in the distribution of body fat.69
But the body-type idea was appealing and soon had a new and more scientifically rigorous champion, William H. Sheldon (1899–1977), a physician and psychologist at Harvard. Shortly after Kretschmer’s book appeared in English, Sheldon began a study of “somatotypes” (body types) and over several decades collected data on the physical dimensions and personalities of normal people. (Late in life, he extended his studies to mental patients and delinquent boys.)
As a researcher, Sheldon spared himself no pains: he photographed no fewer than four thousand male college students in the nude and recorded their key physical measurements. From this mass of data he concluded that there are three basic body types much resembling Kretschmer’s: the endomorph, soft, rounded, and plump; the mesomorph, hard, square, big-boned, and muscular; and the ectomorph, tall, thin, and large of skull. These types, he believed, represent the special development of one or another of the three layers of cells that first differentiate in the embryo: the endoderm, from which arise the digestive tract and internal organs; the mesoderm, from which come bones and muscles; and the ectoderm, from which develops the nervous system.
To show the relation of personality traits to these somatotypes, Sheldon administered personality tests to two hundred of his subjects, and over the years gathered a wealth of other trait data from extensive interviews and his own observations of behavior. He found, as he had expected to, that a characteristic personality pattern was associated with each somatotype. The short, plump endomorph is usually social, relaxed, talkative, and sybaritic; the well-balanced mesomorph is energetic, assertive, courageous, optimistic, and sports-loving; and the tall, thin ectomorph is introverted, shy, intellectual, inhibited, and unsociable. Sheldon hypothesized that the genes determine which somatotype prevails as the fetus develops and thus which personality pattern the person manifests.70
His major publications, appearing in the 1940s, aroused much public and professional interest. But most psychologists found Sheldon’s typology simplistic and his research methods faulty: he paid little attention to the socio-economic background of his subjects, although a child of poverty is hardly likely to grow up a fat, jolly