Leo D.M.J. Aurini - February 12, 2012


Psychology I - The Four Personality Types

Topics
Freud's id
Hosted by
Leo D.M.J. Aurini
Mentioned
Raphael Freud Kim Stanley Robinson Leonardo
Atheistkult A Bedtime Story

Episode Stats


Length

17 minutes

Words per minute

125.38

Word count

2,199

Sentence count

155

Harmful content

Misogyny

2

sentences flagged

Toxicity

2

sentences flagged

Hate speech

11

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In this episode, I discuss the 4 basic personality types, the heuristic I use to categorize them, and how to recognize them. I also talk about Freud's theory of the ego and the id, and the relationship between the two.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:01.000 Last summer, I'd started a series of videos on psychology and the four main types of personality disorders,
00:00:08.000 and how you can recognize them and avoid those people in your life.
00:00:13.000 And I never actually finished the series.
00:00:17.000 There were a few reasons, but the biggest reason is I just wasn't happy with the quality of them.
00:00:23.000 Making these videos is a skill that you get better at over time, and my early videos are harder to watch than these.
00:00:32.000 And so, partly because I've had a bunch of requests to finish the series, so I guess the material was good, even if the presentation wasn't,
00:00:40.000 I've decided to completely relaunch the series.
00:00:44.000 This is going to be the first of five videos covering, in this one, what the four basic personality types are, what the heuristic I'm using is,
00:00:55.000 and the following four videos are going to cover the personality disorders that you need to look out for, the most common, and how to recognize them.
00:01:05.000 They are the psychopath, the histrionic, the narcissist, and most dangerous of all, the borderline.
00:01:17.000 Now, to reiterate what I said in the other videos, it's important to remember that psychology isn't really a science.
00:01:26.000 Now, it has this elaborate framework based upon experimental data, but any set of data needs to be incorporated into a certain heuristic.
00:01:38.000 You need a set of laws that says what this means, how you categorize things, what's black, what's white.
00:01:48.000 And with psychology, the theoretical framework it's based upon has never been tested, verified, let alone proven.
00:02:02.000 Freud used to dominate psychology, and then they threw out Freud for the modern system for no particular reason.
00:02:13.000 And soon, I think we're going to see the modern system thrown out, because the amount of things they're categorizing as personality disorders nowadays is becoming absurd.
00:02:23.000 And the fact that it's obviously a democratic process, not a scientific process.
00:02:29.000 To give you two examples, homosexuality used to be a mental disorder, and then it wasn't because it was politically incorrect.
00:02:36.000 The explanation for schizophrenia used to be the schizophrenic mother, that parents that abused or didn't pay attention to their kids cause schizophrenia, 0.80
00:02:51.000 and then a whole bunch of parent lobbies got together and forced them to take that out of the diagnostic manual.
00:02:58.000 Once again, science isn't decided by popular opinion, but psychology is.
00:03:10.000 So, although I'd be cautious to throw out everything in modern psychology, we do need to recognize that fundamentally there's a lot of guesswork to it.
00:03:23.000 There's a lot of guesswork to it. There's a lot of opinion to it.
00:03:27.000 And humanity? Here's the thing. We are born with a module in our brains that very accurately imitates other brains.
00:03:38.000 We know how to understand how people work.
00:03:42.000 If you've ever read a really bad story with characters that act in ways that make no sense except for plot contrivance,
00:03:49.000 you pick up on that because you're designed to pick up on that.
00:03:55.000 And the skills that make a good therapist are very, very similar to the skills that make a good author, or a good priest, or a good advertiser.
00:04:07.000 It's more of an art to understanding the human condition right now than it is a science.
00:04:16.000 For the most part, the science is just used to prove what we already know to be true.
00:04:22.000 So, the heuristics I'm going to use are no more based upon neurology than modern psychology is.
00:04:36.000 So keep that in mind.
00:04:37.000 This is just a metric I'm using because it does a really good job explaining things, and we've been using it for a long, long time,
00:04:45.000 which does suggest that it has some validity to it.
00:04:48.000 But ultimately, if we're going to understand how people work, we need to understand how the brain works and what the brain structures are.
00:04:55.000 Neurology is the true science for understanding what intelligence is.
00:05:00.000 With that out of the side, let's get to the first little heuristic, the first metric I'm going to use.
00:05:08.000 And that is Freud's id, ego, and superego.
00:05:15.000 I'm sure most of you have heard of this already.
00:05:18.000 It's pretty common knowledge, even if it is discounted by psychology.
00:05:23.000 But Freud breaks the brain down into three essential elements.
00:05:29.000 And for the record, there is a little bit of neurology which suggests that, yeah, these things are a little bit accurate.
00:05:39.000 First, he breaks the brain down into the id and the ego.
00:05:44.000 The id is the animal side of the brain. It's the emotive side of the brain.
00:05:51.000 It's the part that wants to eat, that falls in love, that has emotions.
00:05:57.000 It's the part that honesty stems from, funnily enough.
00:06:02.000 Because it can only feel what it feels in the moment.
00:06:08.000 On the other half of the brain is the logical, the rational, the bit that measures and is scientific about things.
00:06:18.000 The ego.
00:06:24.000 And so these are the two different parts of the brain struggling against each other.
00:06:29.000 And when I said there's some neurological justification for this, you have the left brain, right brain phenomenon.
00:06:36.000 And in fact, this pattern goes back millennia, where the right side of the body is considered the male half, the part controlled by the left brain, the rational brain.
00:06:48.000 And the left side of the body is considered the female half, the emotional, the intuitive, so forth.
00:06:57.000 So yeah, that's it. Once again, funny how neurology is actually proving some of our old myths.
00:07:04.000 But the important thing to remember about the id and the ego is neither of them is properly rational all by itself.
00:07:12.000 The ego, although logical, is not rational.
00:07:19.000 It is too logical. It's the sort of thing. It knows the value, it knows the cost of everything but the value of nothing.
00:07:26.000 To balance these two aspects of the personality, you have the superego.
00:07:32.000 And the superego is the self. It's the auto-reflective thing inside of you that looks at yourself thinking and chooses between the two of these.
00:07:43.000 Now, to go back to neurology for a second.
00:07:47.000 There's quite a bit of evidence that when we choose to do something, we've actually already decided to do it.
00:07:53.000 And we're creating a post-hoc rationalization for why we chose something.
00:07:57.000 But nonetheless, there does seem to be an element in our brain that makes decisions.
00:08:02.000 And that would be the superego. It balances these two forces, the emotional and the rational, to create the true rational result.
00:08:16.000 And the reason I'm bringing this up and elaborating on it is because with each of the four personality disorders,
00:08:24.000 it really seems that they don't have a superego.
00:08:29.000 That their id and their ego just run amok.
00:08:32.000 Their wind-up toys just t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t going through society and causing havoc wherever they are.
00:08:41.000 That's the difference between a sane person and an insane is that we have superegos. 0.99
00:08:47.000 Now, the second heuristic I'm going to use, the basic breakdown into the four personality types,
00:08:57.000 is essentially the four humors of old medical science.
00:09:02.000 And these four humors are best broken down upon two axes.
00:09:08.000 There's the vertical y-axe, is that of extroversion and introversion.
00:09:15.000 The extroversion is the aggressive male sort of energy.
00:09:22.000 It's the pursuer, the one that goes out into the world and initiates things.
00:09:29.000 Whereas the introvert is the female seductress. 1.00
00:09:36.000 It's the passive one, the one that lets stuff come to them.
00:09:42.000 The x-axe, on the other hand, responds very much to the id and the ego.
00:09:54.000 And Kim Stanley Robinson in his novel Red Mars speculated upon the stabile and labile personalities.
00:10:05.000 So the stabile, or id personality, is that personality which doesn't like new situations.
00:10:16.000 They're task-oriented, they like to be in a familiar environment, and they like to become a master at their craft.
00:10:26.000 They're going to be more interested in things like mechanics, computer programming, reading books.
00:10:35.000 The labile, or the id on the other hand, is ultimately people-focused.
00:10:41.000 They seek out new environments.
00:10:43.000 They want to meet new people, do new things all the time.
00:10:47.000 They're not so much into reading, they're into experimenting.
00:10:55.000 They're not so much into rigor, they're into doing new things.
00:10:59.000 And it's at the four vertices of these two very similar axes that you get the four basic personality types.
00:11:10.000 So, starting off with the extrovert stabile, that is the person that enjoys mastering their environment, enjoys being in control of their environment, but is also very extroverted, very willing to go out there and initiate things, you get the choleric personality. 0.94
00:11:31.000 The choleric is the leader type. 1.00
00:11:34.000 It is Leonardo from Ninja Turtles.
00:11:37.000 It is the personality that likes people, it's an extrovert personality, likes to talk to people, but ultimately wants to organize them towards some task.
00:11:49.000 They will organize and use people to accomplish this task.
00:11:55.000 Down here, you get the melancholic.
00:12:01.000 This is the person that is introverted and likes familiar environments.
00:12:07.000 They like to master what they're doing.
00:12:10.000 You get the bookworm, you get Donatello.
00:12:13.000 Donatello likes to master his machines.
00:12:18.000 He likes to be completely in control of his environment and doesn't necessarily seek out other people.
00:12:25.000 He's pretty happy just reading his books and tooling around on his computer and doing whatever it is he enjoys.
00:12:34.000 This is probably the most anti-social of the personality types, but it doesn't mean they're not social.
00:12:40.000 It just means that they don't need people around them.
00:12:44.000 They need books.
00:12:45.000 They need things.
00:12:46.000 If you're having a house party, this is the person that's going to make sure that everybody has a clean glass.
00:12:55.000 They're going to make sure that there's enough booze at the party, that everybody has a ride home.
00:13:00.000 But they're not going to force themselves on everybody.
00:13:02.000 They're going to go around in the background taking care of things to make sure that everybody else has a good time.
00:13:08.000 As opposed to the choleric. 0.78
00:13:10.000 The choleric is the one that's going to make sure that everybody agrees on what the party is. 0.99
00:13:17.000 Are we going to listen to music?
00:13:18.000 Are we going to have a barbecue?
00:13:20.000 Is watching over everybody?
00:13:22.000 Is going to involve themselves if somebody is sitting not talking to anybody else?
00:13:27.000 They're going to be the ones managing the party.
00:13:31.000 The party, this person is going to be doing the background work.
00:13:34.740 The next type of personality, let's go up here to the Sanguine.
00:13:42.380 The Sanguine is the extrovert, likes approaching other people, likes talking to people. 1.00
00:13:49.180 And they're also labile, in that they seek out new situations.
00:13:53.800 They're very, very people-focused.
00:13:55.500 They like adventures.
00:13:56.620 They like experimentation.
00:13:58.300 It's the Raphael.
00:13:59.820 They have a lot of self-confidence, but they can get bored easily.
00:14:05.800 And so the Raphael, in the party scenario, at the house party, he's the guy saying,
00:14:10.600 hey, you know what we need to do?
00:14:11.680 We need to go jump in the pool, or we need to do this.
00:14:14.520 He'll have all the ideas, and he'll experiment, but he won't follow through on them.
00:14:21.240 So it's generally the choleric that's going to say, okay, that's a great idea, 1.00
00:14:26.380 but he's going to organize it, make sure everybody gets in the car and drives to the park to go get drunk in the park,
00:14:32.200 or whatever you're doing.
00:14:32.840 There's the sanguine, the happy, outgoing, experimental person.
00:14:42.380 And finally, you get the phlegmatic.
00:14:47.200 The phlegmatic person, they are interested in people.
00:14:53.220 They really like people.
00:14:55.040 They like new situations all the time.
00:14:57.860 But they don't like to initiate contact, or they don't like to initiate new experiences.
00:15:04.580 They like the new experiences to come to them.
00:15:07.920 They're an introvert.
00:15:09.780 And so they actually make excellent HR people, excellent bureaucrats,
00:15:15.360 because they get along very well with other people.
00:15:18.520 Unlike the melancholic, or the melancholic, he likes to play with his machines, right?
00:15:24.040 The phlegmatic likes to deal with people all the time,
00:15:27.700 but they don't like to be the center of attention.
00:15:29.720 And so in the party situation, these are the people that want to come with you to a party,
00:15:35.020 but they don't really want to talk.
00:15:37.260 They maybe just want to dance.
00:15:39.200 They're quite a bit of a follower in a lot of ways.
00:15:43.320 Like they want a good leader to take care of the leadership responsibilities,
00:15:46.740 so that they can just talk to people,
00:15:49.220 maybe get some sideways compliments,
00:15:51.720 because they don't want direct attention,
00:15:54.340 and just have a great time.
00:15:57.720 They're the body of the party.
00:16:05.300 So those are the four personality types.
00:16:10.800 Choleric leader, melancholic bookworm, 0.99
00:16:14.940 the sanguine optimist,
00:16:17.680 and the phlegmatic bureaucrat.
00:16:20.280 And each of the personality disorders that I'm about to describe
00:16:25.160 is essentially one of these personality types
00:16:29.140 with the brakes gone.
00:16:32.660 Choleric becomes the sociopath. 0.97
00:16:35.940 Melancholic becomes the histrionic. 0.98
00:16:39.300 The sanguine becomes the narcissist. 0.98
00:16:41.520 And the phlegmatic becomes the borderline.
00:16:48.380 So in the following videos,
00:16:49.880 we'll go into a little bit more depth
00:16:51.680 about what each of these personality types is like,
00:16:54.260 and then how that corresponds
00:16:56.180 to the personality disorder based off of it.
00:17:00.600 Anyway, see you guys in the next video.
00:17:02.360 We'll see you guys in the next video.