Research report
Temperament profiles in physicians, lawyers, managers, industrialists, architects, journalists, and artists: a study in psychiatric outpatients

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Abstract

Background

With the possible exception of cyclothymia in artists, there is a paucity of data in the literature on the temperament in different professions.

Methods

For this exploratory study, we sought to generate preliminary data on temperaments among psychiatric outpatients, including physicians (n=41), lawyers (n=30), managers and executives (n=35), industrialists (n=48), architects (n=27), journalists (n=34), and a mixed group of artists (n=48). They were compared with age, sex, social class, and affective disorder matched outpatients outside of these professions, drawn from the same clinical settings to serve as our Comparison Group (CG, n=120). We used an interview version of the Akiskal-Mallya criteria for temperaments. We finally used the DSM-III-R obsessive compulsive personality (OC traits).

Results

Compared with the CG, lawyers and physicians had high rates of dysthymic temperament and OC traits. Managers, like lawyers and doctors, had high rates on OC traits but were different in being very low on cyclothymic and twice as hyperthymic than the CG was. Industrialists, who, by definition, were self-made, had even higher rates of hyperthymic traits. Both architects and artists seemed to have benefited from being cyclothymic (3–4 times higher than CG's); interestingly, architects had higher levels of OC traits, and artists were less obsessional than the CG was. Overall, among managers/executives and lawyers, 41% met criteria for affective temperaments, whereas the equivalent rate among the remainder was 77%.

Limitation

Given that this is a chart review of existing clinical records, it was not possible to be blind to the profession of the patients. A mixed group of artists may have obscured differences among artists from different domains of art (e.g., poets vs. performing artists), and the same can be said of physicians (e.g., internists vs. surgeons). A disclaimer would be appropriate: Ours is not a study on eminence in the different professions but on the temperament and personality profiles that distinguish among them.

Conclusions

Despite the foregoing limitations and overlapping attributes in the different professions, they nonetheless emerged as having distinct temperamental and personality profiles. Dysthymic and obsessional attributes are notable in lawyers and physicians. We confirm the role of cyclothymia in artists and architects. The role of the hyperthymic temperament in managers, self-made industrialists, and journalists, to the best of our knowledge, is being reported for the first time. The role of cyclothymic and hyperthymic temperaments appears to be moderated by obsessional traits across the entire professional realm examined. In particular, artists' creative imagination appears “liberated” by low levels of OC traits, whereas among architects, relatively high levels of OC traits seem to contribute to the execution of their work. More tentatively, judging from the overall levels of affective temperaments in the remaining professions, on average, more of the managers/executives than self-made industrialists could be described as “colder” in temperament, and more of the physicians “warmer” than lawyers are. Journalists, as a group, appeared to possess the broadest representation of affective temperaments. The foregoing conclusions must be regarded as tentative, even hypothetical, in need of verification among professionals without major psychiatric disorders. Nonetheless, temperament profiles among psychiatrically ill professionals in the seven professional realms studies can help predict how they relate to their doctors, family members, colleagues, coworkers, and clients/patients. Such knowledge, in turn, can help the therapeutic process.

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).

  • 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%).

  • On dysthymic and OC traits, lawyers had a profile essentially identical to that of the physicians, but somewhat less pronounced on dysthymia.

  • 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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