Research reportTemperament profiles in physicians, lawyers, managers, industrialists, architects, journalists, and artists: a study in psychiatric outpatients
Introduction
The notion that temperament has a role in professional “choice” goes back to, at least, Aristotle (Klibansky et al., 1996), who wondered why poets, philosophers, and statesmen were all of melancholic temperament. In modern times, Kretschmer (1931) wrote a fascinating monograph on men of genius, largely German poets and musicians, and, based on existing biographical data, declared them to be cyclothymic.
More recently, Andreasen (1987), based on a systematically studied sample of students of the creative writing workshop in Iowa and noncreative controls, confirmed Kretschmer's view. Richards et al. (1988), studying broadly defined “creativity” among the relatives of manic-depressive probands, found similar results. In our own study, among psychotic and affectively ill inpatients and outpatients, artistic creativity was limited to bipolars II and III characterized by high cyclothymia (Akiskal and Akiskal, 1988). A recent study of the biography of jazz musicians by Wills (2003) reported high prevalence of “sensation seeking.” Earlier studies by Roe (1946), Drevdahl and Cattell (1958), MacKinnon (1965), and Barron (1972) among a variety of artistic domains, including architecture, had reported the following traits: adventuresome, nonconforming, self-assertive, introspective, self-critical, and sensitive. Such traits in aggregate suggest cyclothymia.
The foregoing studies nearly all pertain to artistic “professions”. The largest formal study on personality in different professions was conducted by the Swiss psychiatrist L. Szondi (Dietrich Blumer, personal communication, December 2003), whose work is not known outside Germanophone countries. Christodoulou (1994) found that residents in psychiatry, contrary to a prevalent stereotype, scored lower on neuroticism than did their counterparts in internal medicine.
The present preliminary communication on temperament and profession is based on a large sample of ambulatory patients examined in our clinical work. We routinely gather data on temperament and profession in our outpatient practice, whether in private or community settings. Such practice is based on the general philosophical stance that distinct temperament traits could be useful not only in professional achievement, but in overall emotional equilibrium and rehabilitation. This perspective is implicit in the ancient Greek concept of temperament as a “balance” between different attributes (Klibansky et al., 1996).
Section snippets
Sample
We reviewed the records of consecutive ambulatory patients with the full spectrum of mental disorders in our practices—all had been under our clinical care or those we had seen in consultation in different countries. Schizophrenia, dementia, and adult mental retardation were excluded. We focused on lawyers (n=34), physicians, including most major subspecialities (n=41), architects (n=27), a mixed group of artists (n=48), journalists (n=34), managers/executives (n=35), and industrialists (n=48).
Results
We summarize the significant findings, comparing each professional group to the controls (CG).
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Physicians had nearly twice as much as dysthymic temperament as CG did (21% vs. 12%) and nearly twice as much as OC traits (32% vs. 17%).
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On dysthymic and OC traits, lawyers had a profile essentially identical to that of the physicians, but somewhat less pronounced on dysthymia.
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Managers had double the level of hyperthymic (43% vs. 20%) and triple that of OC traits (50% vs. 17%); none had cyclothymic
Temperament profiles
The findings presented above provide relatively distinct profiles for each of the professions. Except for high rates of dysthymic temperament and OC traits, lawyers and physicians were otherwise closest to the CG.
Managers, like lawyers and doctors, had high rates on OC traits but were different in being twice as hyperthymic and very low on cyclothymia. Their pronounced OC attributes, it would appear, brought strong task orientation to their hyperthymic energy. Industrialists, who, by
Conclusions
We submit that our data provide preliminary support for the overarching hypothesis of our study, namely, that different temperament profiles lend distinct advantages to each of the professions. We confirm the role of cyclothymia in creative professions, such as art and architecture. Hyperthymic attributes were highest in industrialists and managers/executives. More provocatively, levels of obsessionality seem to modulate the degree to which professions can realize their respective talents. This
Acknowledgements
This work was presented at the American Psychiatric Association annual meeting, May 1997, San Diego (U.S.A.), as well as at the Petersburg Creativity and Mental Illness Conference, May 2004, Bonn (Germany). We appreciate the feedback provided by attendees of those conferences, which helped in the preparation of this manuscript. However, the authors take the responsibility for all the conclusions in the final version of this paper.
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