Book Review: The Spirit-Controlled Woman

Title: The Spirit-Controlled Woman

Author: Beverly LaHaye

Date: 1976

Publisher: Harvest House

ISBN: 0-8981-020-6

Length: 174 pages

Quote: “Keep in mind that no one is made up of one temperament only...The important factor is to determine your predominant temperament and then to consider your strengths and weaknesses.”

Rereading this book, I kept thinking “Yes, and...Yes, but...Oh, nobody says that any more...”so many times, I decided that what it needs is an update. I could write one.This was a seminal book, Controversial in its day because it was written from extra-clinical observation rather than clinical research, it gained support from recent developments in neurological science. This was the first book b a woman, for women, that supported introverts' right to be ourselves. Still, by now it seems quaint in places, and some of LaHaye's wordings seem to need historical footnotes.

Hippocrates believed many things that modern science seems to have disproved. His explanation of the four most easily recognized personality types as being produced by "humours" was one of his best known errors. Nevertheless he had accurately deserved personality patterns associated with permanent, inborn physical traits. 

His "Melancholy" temperament, now associated with more complete neurological development throughout the body, resembled what we now call High Sensory Perceptivity.

His "Phlegmatic" temperament resembled the personality now associated with a Long Brain Stem.

His "Choleric" temperament resembled what we now call a "Type A" personality. 

His "Sanguine" temperament resembled what we now call Attention Deficiency.

Beverly and Tim LaHaye observed these personality types in their church and wrote several groundbreaking books, not formal scientific studies but advice to church members and leaders, encouraging Christians of each type to accept themselves as "normal" and work with the talents they'd been given. 

They did not anticipate how well modern science would support their ideas. In 1976 "introverted" and "extroverted" described behavior, with no solid neurological meaning, so Tim LaHaye could describe Beverly LaHaye's younger, insecure self as "a fearful, introverted person" who, through the transforming power of God’s love, became "a gracious, outgoing, radiant" extrovert. As we use those words today, that doesn't happen. Introverts are defined by a gift from God and remain introverts all our lives. Shyness based in a sense of social inadequacy is a stage most people outgrow in adolescence; for people like Beverly LaHaye, a combination of upward social mobility and extroversion can make shyness persistent and painful. The younger Beverly LaHaye's adoption of introvert-like behavior was a less functional adjustment to her situation. Apparently Beverly LaHaye never had an introvert's brain, which makes it remarkable that she wrote readable books. If she was a bit too comfortable with her less complete brain, due to contemporary society's unhealthy infatuation with extrovert personalities, at least she was a leader of the corrective movement in the church. She was an extrovert but she was gifted with the insight that many, perhaps most, Christians are not meant to be extroverts and should never have tried to be. 

Some of the effects of our neurological and endocrinological temperament patterns don’t change during a person’s lifetime. Others change somewhat depending on our medical conditions. Personality types shaped by genetic traits are not limited to Hippocrates' four; what might be called subtypes have been described, associated with various medical conditions associated with hereditary vulnerability or resistance to various diseases, but nearly all people recognize ourselves in descriptions of one or two of the classical four types. 

People can choose at any moment to do things that are incompatible with their natural inclinations. Really heroic or villainous acts aren't associated with any temperament type; our temperaments show in our mundane, routine, habitual behavior, neither very good nor very bad. Nevertheless we all feel most comfortable with ourselves, and we all are most believable and likable to others, when we are “being ourselves.”

Emotional problems, mood disorders, and physical diseases are independent of natural personality traits even though some of them seem to mimic temperament traits. Shyness has nothing to do with the physical trait we now call introversion, although introverts face enough prejudice in some social circles to justify not only shyness but hostility. A truly "Phlegmatic," "philosophical" temperament is usually associated with a thin body shape; fat people who seem "Phlegmatic" are likely to be extroverts with weak thyroid metabolism. High Sensory Perceptivity is typical of people who make breakthroughs in understanding diseases, both as doctors or therapists and as patients; most people who have disease conditions, including autism, are not HSP but most people whose books help us understand disease conditions are HSP. 

Given that we can't will ourselves to "be" what we're not, I think the one thing in Transformed Temperaments that has worn least well is the admonitions or resolutions to "be" a certain "way." We can only be what we are; we probably aren't even qualified to judge that. We may know that we, or other people, are feeling or looking angry today, are doing something that seems kind today, are acting in a manner that's perceived as friendly today. We don't know until someone's life story is complete--i.e. the person is dead--whether person was consistntly an especially angry or kind or friendly individual. 

I find myself wanting to replace LaHaye's "killer BE" phrases with more realistic, active verbs. Whether you are or are not an "outgoing" person is not really subject to your control, although if you are you can certainly learn to moderate the behavior. A person who feels shy (or, let's face it,bored) by a social obligation can, however, remind perself "Shake hands, say 'how do you do?', and listen to what people say." Likewise, someone who craves control of other people's attention can remind perself to "Watch what I'm doing, and speak only when I'm spoken to." Psychologically, limiting our efforts to specific voluntary behavior seems to offer less stress and more success than frettng about how to "be"!  

The Spirit-Controlled Woman was a first book in every sense of the term—LaHaye's first book, a first book on the four-temperament model of personality as observed in women’s groups, and a first book for introverts trying to recover the social status nature had previously reserved for us (because, for most of the centuries of human existence, extroverts either quietened down or died young). It was far from perfect. It still accomplished a lot.

What’s kept Transformed Temperaments readable today is the Scriptures. Despite LaHaye’s tendency to ignore women’s job concerns, her appalling insensitivity to the real plight of the “sexy secretaries” of the 1970s, and the influence of contemporary fascination with those hypothetical emotional conflicts a trained hypnotist could bring out of almost anybody...as a book of Christian advice on the struggle with “weaknesses,” this was a good one. And it still is. It was written by and for the generation that are now dying off; it reflected their times and customs more even than it did baby-boomers’, but because it consists mostly of sound Bible-based advice to avoid sin and practice virtue, it’s still worth reading today.