Title: The Spirit-Controlled Woman
Author: Beverly LaHaye
Date: 1976
Publisher: Harvest House
ISBN: 0-89081-020-6
Length: 174 pages
Quote: "[W]omen have asked when something would be written from the woman's point of view regarding the four temperaments."
Beverly and our late correspondent Tim LaHaye were the first Christian teachers to promote the idea that Christians were not meant to be all-alike "super salesmen for Jesus," that individuals have natural healthy differences of personality. In the 1960s, 1970s, even 1980s, this was controversial. Some churches were openly teaching that real Christians wouldn't be introverts. The best way I can describe this early book is that it still reflects the ignorance of its period about why some of us are introverts, but it was a refreshing change from the hate campaign directed against us at the time.
Around the turn of the century, when neurological studies were able to identify physical bases for at least three of the classic four temperament patterns documented in this book, the accuracy of the LaHayes' observations--and those of the early writers who first identified the patterns--made their books remarkable. Though it's traditional in this field to cite writers earlier than Hippocrates, and the first observers of the temperament patterns were neither Christians nor scientists, the observation and documentation of these patterns is evergreen. Ancient and medieval philosophers wrote a lot of quaint poetic fantasy about the mystical or pseudo-scientific bases for the patterns; they wrote accurately about the human behavior they could see. As a pastor's wife, counsellor, and teacher Beverly LaHaye had opportunities to observe the behavior of twentieth century church ladies at close range. That is what she describes in this book--sometimes with the cutesy humor of her generation (each type is personified with a given name like "Clara Choleric") and sometimes with wit and insight of her own.
To introduce this book to younger readers...really I sat down and wrote a whole new book about how today's Melanie Melancholy, Felice Phlegmatic, Chloe Choleric, and Samantha Sanguine are like and different from their mothers, Martha, Polly, Clara, and Sarah. I could publish that one, if youall want to read it. Meanwhile, in this summary I'll try to link the descriptions in the book with what we currently understand about four documented physical traits that shape human personalities:
1. "Melancholy" did not originally mean depressive (each of the four classic names has pejorated into a word for the type's worst quality) but feeling what C.S. Lewis called Joy--longing for a world better than ours, the idealism of people who have higher blood levels of certain hormones and develop more nerve endings than the rest of humankind. This web site usually describes us as Highly Sensory Perceptive, or HSP, as described at hsperson.org. This is predominantly an introvert trait because most HSPs are creative types who work alone, but obviously many HSPs also work with and for the public--creativity has nothing to do with shyness.
2. "Phlegmatic" did not originally mean bored (see above), but detached, philosophical, prone to think seriously about things instead of reacting emotionally. This is the most obvious introvert trait people can have; The Introvert Advantage addressed only phlegmatic-type introverts. This web site usually describes Phlegmatics in terms of the Long Brain Stem, or LBS, that shows up on their neurological scans. Phlegmatic personalities can be mistaken for personalities affected by disease conditions that slow their reaction times, like hypothyroidism, but the Phlegmatic temperament is a good healthy trait.
3. "Choleric" did not originally mean grouchy, but decisive, bold, aggressive--well, probably it always did connote someone who was prone to grumpiness, but it was seen as the ideal temperament for war chiefs. This is the strong-willed temperament. Cholerics incline toward Type A behavior; they can control this. They can control almost everything and, if respect for others' boundaries is pounded into them at a formative stage, they make good leaders, organizers, and entrepreneurs. Beverly LaHaye describes herself as a repressed ("feminized," trained to be shy and ineffective) Choleric who might have seemed like a Melancholy gone wrong, when young, but blossomed out into a powerful teacher, speaker, and leader. The Choleric temperament is basically extrovert, often though not always found isolated from the definitive introvert trait called a conscience or sense of shame.
4. "Sanguine" did not originally mean naive so much as cheerful and chatty. (However, the Sanguine temperament was associated with fevers and "corrected" by bloodletting; up into the nineteenth century it was considered a very mixed blessing to be noticed as cheerful and chatty.) This is the true extrovert personality. I have yet to find any evidence that it's associated with a desirable physical trait so much as with the absence of other desirable traits. The closest match for the Sanguine personality modern science seems to have identified is attention deficiency disorder (ADD)--but most observers continue to feel that the Sanguine personality is different from ADD, if only in degree.
Most people can identify with one predominant pattern and one or two secondary patterns. Not all people, however, identify at once with a pattern that correlates with a physical trait they actually have. This is where personal growth, recovery from disease conditions (where possible), and the "Spirit-controlled" or radically Christian life come in. This book might have been more interesting if it had had more to say about the Type A behavior of people who are not natural Cholerics, the hypothyroidism of people who are not natural Phlegmatics, and the depressive conditions of people who are anything but natural Melancholies. LaHaye observed relatively little of that and more of the behavior of church ladies who learned nicer social behavior patterns in the course of obeying the Bible's guidelines for the Christian life.
Accepting God's forgiveness can release the false guilt of pseudo-Melancholies, practicing good will can relieve the shyness of pseudo-Phlegmatics...LaHaye unfortunately has less to say about how learning to relax can reduce the bossiness of pseudo-Cholerics (I could write that chapter from experience), and how learning that it may well be that nobody is really meant to be a Sanguine chattermonkey can make pseudo-Sanguines happier and easier to love. Some of the most obnoxious extroverts in those "saved by Christ plus extroversion" churches are introverts trying desperately to pass as what they're not.
In the 1980s the LaHayes officially handed down the "temperament workshops" ministry to Florence and Fred Littauer. Both couples wrote other temperament books that might be considered to have updated or replaced this one. Nevertheless, people remembered The Spirit-Controlled Woman, and it's become the classic on its topic.
Beverly LaHaye has retired but her charity, the Concerned Women for America, is still active, so if you order this book from me online this web site will send 10% of the total cost to CWA.
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