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Galen's Prophecy: Temperament In Human Nature
Nearly two thousand years ago a physician named Galen of Pergamon suggested that much of the variation in human behavior could be explained by an individual's temperament. Since that time, inborn dispositions have fallen in and out of favor. Based on fifteen years of research, Galen's Prophecy now provides fresh insights into these complex questions, offering startling new evidence to support Galen's ancient classification of melancholic and sanguine adults. Integrating evidence and ideas from biology, philosophy, and psychology, Jerome Kagan examines the implications of the idea of temperament for aggressive behavior, conscience, psychopathology, and the degree to which each of us can be expected to control our deepest emotions.
376 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1994
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About the author
Jerome Kagan
84 books86 followersJerome Kagan was an American psychologist, who was the Daniel and Amy Starch Research Professor of Psychology at Harvard University, as well as, co-faculty at the New England Complex Systems Institute. He was one of the key pioneers of developmental psychology.
Kagan has shown that an infant's "temperament" is quite stable over time, in that certain behaviors in infancy are predictive of certain other behavior patterns in adolescence. He did extensive work on temperament and gave insight on emotion.
In 2001, he was listed in the Review of General Psychology among the one hundred most eminent psychologists of the twentieth century. After being evaluated quantitatively and qualitatively, Kagan was twenty-second on the list, just above Carl Jung.
Kagan has shown that an infant's "temperament" is quite stable over time, in that certain behaviors in infancy are predictive of certain other behavior patterns in adolescence. He did extensive work on temperament and gave insight on emotion.
In 2001, he was listed in the Review of General Psychology among the one hundred most eminent psychologists of the twentieth century. After being evaluated quantitatively and qualitatively, Kagan was twenty-second on the list, just above Carl Jung.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
March 11, 2019
I came to this book as a result of my reading of Susan Cain’s Quiet, where I first found mention of it. While I have no regrets that I chose to buy and read it, I must confess that I found the reading of it to be difficult.
Galen’s Prophecy
is as close to textbook reading as I’ve gotten in many years. If I awarded it five stars, that award is meant to be reflective of the scholarly merit of the book—and not to suggest it as a read for everyman. This work, I believe, was meant for child psychologists or, at least, students of child psychology who aspire to the field as a profession.
As just an example of what I’ll call the “typical” prose of this treatise, I offer the following random citation from pp. 212 – 213: “(t)he mean heart rates gathered at four months and older during quiet baseline periods, when no stress was imposed, did not differentiate high from low reactive infants nor high from low fear children. This is not surprising, and other investigators have reported similar results. However, the magnitude of heart rate acceleration in response to selected episodes, especially the rise in heart rate in response to a sour taste, was larger for high reactives. Sour tastes typically produce large increases in heart rate in both animals and humans, larger than those observed in response to other taste qualities. The origin of this sympathetically mediated acceleration is a circuit from the gustatory nerve to the nucleus tractus solitarius (in the medulla) to the parabrachial nucleus (in the pons). One projection from the parabrachial nucleus goes directly to the sympathetic chain, another to the central nucleus of the amygdala and from there to the sympathetic nervous system.”
Now if one of the patients discussed in the pages immediately following this citation had responded, upon reading (or hearing) it ‘You can’t question me that way, I’m Napoleon’ (p. 215), I, for one, would not have found his or her declaration out of line.
But as granite-like as this prose may be, there are gems to be found in the rock-hardness of it. One such gem occurs on p. 259 in this quote from “Theodore Bullock, an eminent neuroscientist, (who) wrote, ‘(t)he measure of value of a hypothesis … is not its plausibility or compatibility with a subset of facts, or its presumed validity, but its heuristic potential—how much it suggests for the next stage of investigation.’”
If you now choose to read Galen’s Prophecy, I wish you luck. But don’t say I didn’t warn you.
RRB
Brooklyn, NY
11 March 2019
As just an example of what I’ll call the “typical” prose of this treatise, I offer the following random citation from pp. 212 – 213: “(t)he mean heart rates gathered at four months and older during quiet baseline periods, when no stress was imposed, did not differentiate high from low reactive infants nor high from low fear children. This is not surprising, and other investigators have reported similar results. However, the magnitude of heart rate acceleration in response to selected episodes, especially the rise in heart rate in response to a sour taste, was larger for high reactives. Sour tastes typically produce large increases in heart rate in both animals and humans, larger than those observed in response to other taste qualities. The origin of this sympathetically mediated acceleration is a circuit from the gustatory nerve to the nucleus tractus solitarius (in the medulla) to the parabrachial nucleus (in the pons). One projection from the parabrachial nucleus goes directly to the sympathetic chain, another to the central nucleus of the amygdala and from there to the sympathetic nervous system.”
Now if one of the patients discussed in the pages immediately following this citation had responded, upon reading (or hearing) it ‘You can’t question me that way, I’m Napoleon’ (p. 215), I, for one, would not have found his or her declaration out of line.
But as granite-like as this prose may be, there are gems to be found in the rock-hardness of it. One such gem occurs on p. 259 in this quote from “Theodore Bullock, an eminent neuroscientist, (who) wrote, ‘(t)he measure of value of a hypothesis … is not its plausibility or compatibility with a subset of facts, or its presumed validity, but its heuristic potential—how much it suggests for the next stage of investigation.’”
If you now choose to read Galen’s Prophecy, I wish you luck. But don’t say I didn’t warn you.
RRB
Brooklyn, NY
11 March 2019
March 16, 2012
One of the few books used in class that I hung onto. I have returned to it again and again, used it many times in many feilds of study not just psych.
Full of so much information, especially given the growing feild of epigenetics (although he does not talk about that per-say it ties directly into what he is talking about, and I have heard lectures from visiting researchers in the feild of epigenetics talk highly of this work).
Bit of a tough read but so worth it!
Subjects covered: biological basis for personality, idea of temperament, effect of environment, parenting, interaction between personalities in the environment, a lot of the history of psych (nothing like following an idea all the way through), child development, social psych, a little sociology...
Full of so much information, especially given the growing feild of epigenetics (although he does not talk about that per-say it ties directly into what he is talking about, and I have heard lectures from visiting researchers in the feild of epigenetics talk highly of this work).
Bit of a tough read but so worth it!
Subjects covered: biological basis for personality, idea of temperament, effect of environment, parenting, interaction between personalities in the environment, a lot of the history of psych (nothing like following an idea all the way through), child development, social psych, a little sociology...
May 5, 2011
A challenging book. The numerous digressions on the scientific method were as informative as the actual subject, including an incisive history of the social sciences in America. His comparisons of qualitative vs. quantitative categorizing, and peak or outlier tendencies vs. averages were also quite good.
The most interesting to me were his various speculations on group differences in temperament, including a digression on the causal connection between temperament and religion (speculations that seemed to me derivative, to some extent, of Ellsworth Huntington's discussion of somatotypes and religion in The Mainsprings of Civilization).
I learned more brain chemistry than I wanted to, and, although it seems he has made some progress, am still dissatisfied with the state of psychology as displayed here.
The most interesting to me were his various speculations on group differences in temperament, including a digression on the causal connection between temperament and religion (speculations that seemed to me derivative, to some extent, of Ellsworth Huntington's discussion of somatotypes and religion in The Mainsprings of Civilization).
I learned more brain chemistry than I wanted to, and, although it seems he has made some progress, am still dissatisfied with the state of psychology as displayed here.
August 15, 2009
Kagan is thoughtful and articulate. Took a class from him on the development of brain and behavior that was jointly taught with a professor from the Psychology department, and a medical doctor. A pivotal course in college. Provided profound insights that continue to impact my life and career decisions.
Read
July 19, 2015Fascinating and a perfect pairing with Genetic Me. Very academic, especially in the middle, which reads like a meta-analysis and kind of overwhelmed me. But the explanations are clear, with beautiful metaphors, references to Virginia Woolf, and spot-on analogies and examples. (Water temperature is a continuous measurement and water phases—ice, liquid, steam—are qualitative categories.) Thanks to Susan, baby researcher extraordinaire, for the recommendation.
Want to Read
June 30, 2010Harvard researcher writing on temperament (from Balkan Ghosts)
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews