Philosophical anthropology and psychiatry: typus melancholicus as a human disposition (original) (raw)

Key ideas of philosophical anthropology furnish the framework for a description of the personality type, typus melancholicus. These key ideas are: (1) all living beings are related to and interact with their environments, (2) all living beings must maintain their identities in distinction from their environments, (3) the biological constitution of human beings leaves them instinct-deficient, (4) the human-world relationship must therefore be partially determined by cultural shaping, and (5) social roles and norms determine the consciousness and behavior of human beings. "Dispositional vectors" are basic tendencies within human beings that move them toward particular forms of world-relatedness. These dispositional vectors are: over-identification with social norms (hypernomia), struggle with social norms (agonomia), under-identification with social norms (hyponomia), and over-identification with personal norms (idionomia). When the dispositional vector of hypernomia moves in a pathological direction, it becomes the personality type, typus melancholicus. The two fundamental features of typus melancholicus are hypernomia and intolerance of ambiguity.