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.
Thank You!!!
Thank You!!!
Thank You!!!
Thank You!!!Thank You!!!
Thank You!!!Thank You!!!
Top Related