Sheldon’s Constitutional

Psychology

Reported by:Rheggine San Juan & Reishell Alexandra Sagun

William Herbert Sheldon, Jr.

(November 19, 1898 - September 17, 1977)

He was an American psychologist and numismatist.

He created the field of somatotype and constitutional psychology that tried to correlate body types with behavior, intelligence and social hierarchy through his Ivy League nude posture photos..

What isConstitutionalPsychology?

Studies the relationship between body build and behavior. The stable characteristics of the person, including “morphology” and biology.

Psychologists reluctant to consider an intimate tie between body and behavior fear of genetic determinism the dogma of the self-made person.

Genotype - genetic code or makeup of an individual.

Phenotype - the visible properties of an organism.

Morphology - the study of the size and shape of human beings.

Morphogenotype - (more than genotype or morphology) determines both physical build and behavior.

• Sheldon’s term for body type, it was his way of trying to “get at” the Morphogenotype, which we cannot do directly.

What isSomatotypes?

3 Kind of Somatotypes:

Endomorphy Derive from the human embryo: endoderm – which develop into internal organ.

relative predominance of body portions involved in digestion

soft and round tends to put on fat easily not suited to hard physical activity

Mesomorphy Derive from the human embryo: mesoderm – which develops into the muscles

and bones.

relative predominance of bone, muscle and connective tissue

strong and tough resistant to injury hardness and rectangularity equipped for strenuous physical

demands

Ectomorphy Derives drom the human embryo ectoderm – which develops into the nervous

system and skin

relative predominance of the skin and the nervous system

thin, delicate and light muscled

poorly equipped for hard physical activity and competition

easily over stimulated

Scales oftemperament

“ ..the dynamics of an individual should be related to the statistic picture he presented”( Sheldon, 1942 )

Viscerotonia

(associated with endomorphy)

love comport and food relaxed in posture react slowly quite even – tempered affectionate

Somatonia

(associated with mesomorphy)

love physical adventure risk taking need for vigorous activity aggressive often insensitive to feelings

of others courageous power and dominant

Cerebrotonia

(associated with ectomorphy)

like to be inconspicuous self – conscious tend to conceal themselves and

the things that concern them prefer to be alone overly fast reactions prone to problem sleeping resistant to habits and routines

SHELDON’S POSITED

3 TYPES OF MENTAL ILLNESS

THAT COULD VARY SEVERITY:

Mental disorder and physique

Sheldon and others found that deliquents and criminals: tended to be “endomorphic mesomorphs, clustering in the northwest corner of his “map.”

Affective(maniac depressive)

Cause:lacking in cerebrotonia patients were low on

ecthomorphy

Paranoid(paranoid psychosis)

Causes: due to low viscerotonia body types correlations

were less clear

Heboid(schizophrenic)

Cause: lack of somatotonia. patients were low on

mesomorphy.

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