3 Personality Types

There are many ways and systems of characterizing personality types. Here we will look at three basic types of human personality.  The first type governs his or her life and reactions mainly with reason.  The second type does so mainly with emotion, and the third does so with the will.  A personality is never completely one-sided; every person is a mixture of types, but one is always predominant.  In some cases, the predominance is obvious; in others, the mixture is more complicated, and therefore the predominant type is more difficult to detect.

In the ideal personality, each of the three aspects has a rightful place.  The harmonious person functions with each aspect in a perfect way, each rising to the fore as appropriate.  More often, the three trends are often in imbalance or predominance.  For instance, where reason should prevail, emotions do, or vice versa.

Let us begin with the personality governed predominantly by reason.  Those who conduct their lives mainly by the reasoning process are apt to neglect the emotions.  They can be afraid of emotions, and tend to suppress and control them.  Unfortunately those who are afraid of emotion often don’t trust their intuition as they distrust its

supposed intangibility.  The reason-type can have an aloofness and often secretly look down on the emotion-type.  The will, which is not necessarily self-will, is, in this type, used mainly to follow deductions made with the reasoning process and is used premeditatedly, often overcautiously while seldom paying attention to the emotions or intuition. Such a person of reason is often an intellectual, perhaps a scientist.  He or she is often an agnostic or even an atheist, who tends to be materialistic. Furthermore, the reason-type has great difficulty with intuitive judgment of others and of the self. 

The will, which is a necessity in life for all, is used one-sidedly by both types.  The reason-type uses will, whereas the emotion-
type is carried away by emotions and uses willpower unconsciously and erratically.  The harmonious
personality finds the healthy middle way and uses the will rationally or emotionally, depending on
the situation.  The will should be a servant both to reason and emotion.

The emotion-type is equally one-sided.  Predominantly emotional people often pride
themselves that only they are capable of truly feeling.  They in turn can secretly look down on people they label "intellectuals.".  The emotion-type tends to
have clearer intuition and is sometimes less afraid of feeling and inner experience than is the reason- type.  However, the emotion-type, contrary to the reason-type who holds life’s reins too tightly, often loses his or her grip on life’s reins altogether. When in a negative state they are often so carried away by uncontrolled feelings that they lose control of themselves.  Due to their overemphasis on the emotional side, they neglect the equally important reasoning functions of thinking, discriminating, selecting, and weighing.
Uncontrolled emotions bring havoc into the extreme emotion-person’s life, as well as into his or her surroundings.  This type must cultivate the faculty of
selecting, deliberately thinking and planning.  This selecting process is the beginning of wisdom.

The emotion-type also uses will, of course, for no one can exist without doing so.  But the
emotion-type uses will chaotically and impulsively, without planning or deliberation.  Submerged in
unchanneled instincts rather than constructive intuition.

The reasoning type and emotional type can be seen as polarities of each other.
Both are subconsciously afraid of their opposite extremes, and therefore they remain in their
own extreme.  They thus act from a wrong conclusion.  Led by the wrong conclusion, they feel or
unconsciously think that their own extreme is a better solution to life than the opposite type’s.  The
reason-type, afraid of losing control, cuts out not only a major part of life’s necessary experience, but
beauty and happiness as well.  The emotion-type fears that curbing and disciplining his or her nature.

In the third category is the will-type who is altogether different.  Will is supposed to be a
servant, never a master.  Ideally the will should serve equally the reasoning process and the
emotional and intuitive faculties.  The will-type makes a master of the servant.  This brings the
personality out of focus in a way that can become dangerous.
Like the other two types, such persons may unconsciously look down on both of the others.
The will-type thinks or feels something to the effect of, "The reason-type is just an intellectual who
talks well and has wonderful theories, but it is all in the abstract.  Nothing is accomplished by that.
Nothing is achieved.  I am the achiever."  The emotion-type, who accomplishes even less, is even
more despicable to the will-type. 

The person of will, for whom the servant is the master, is out for achievement and tangible
results. This focus tends to make such a person impatient and apt to forfeit the very result he or she
seeks. Or unable to enjoy them once achieved. Will dominance cripples the reasoning process, which, joined with the emotional nature, leads to wisdom.
Without such wisdom, people either cannot accomplish what they set out to accomplish or, if they
succeed, cannot benefit from the accomplishment in the right way and thus will lose it again.  The
will-type tends to lose sight not only of caution but also of many aspects and considerations of life
that are essential in order to gain truth for oneself, for others, as well as for any given situation.

The person of will also neglects the emotional side, fearing emotion as much as the reason-
type does, but with a different purpose, often subconscious.  Emotions are
acceptable to the will-type only so long as she or he remains master of them; otherwise, emotions
might hinder this person’s aim.  The will-type, like the reason-type, also misses an integral part of the
life experience, of giving one’s self up to a feeling without knowing the outcome and the possible
advantage of doing so.

Coming to recognize if, when, and how, we are dominant in reason, emotion or will is the first step toward a more balanced approach to life. The process of self discovery is to utilize our natural strengths, and free ourselves from subconsciously held patterns of limitation.

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