The choleric is an introvert in the Active life position. That is, a person who knows everything about themselves and, through that knowledge, shapes the world around them in a dominant way. The word “choleric” itself is a pop label — a very well-known one, and 3,000 years old by now. But what stands behind it?
The term “choleric” was originally brought into everyday use by Hippocrates. It was a revolutionary discovery for the year 300 BC, and it lived on as dogma until the 17th century. Today all that is left of the “father of medicine” is a linguistic legacy — that is... a word.
Within the S-Theory, the choleric is the name for a person with the attitude of Introversion and a dominant masculine principle — that is, a person in the Active life position.
As an introvert, the choleric knows themselves inside out — their feelings, their sensations and their states. It is through their own sensations that they explore the world around them. And in the name of that exploration cholerics never forget to create all sorts of situations that are not always comfortable for the people around them, to take up a fair amount of space, to make noise and kick up a row when it is necessary (and strictly only then), and to head stubbornly for their goals, ignoring barriers and obstacles along the way.
Obstacles, by the way, inspire them and give them a lift. By nature cholerics are fighters, marked out by decisiveness, drive, the effectiveness of their actions, pragmatism, clear goal-setting and the ability to throw themselves into a task, work it out and get to the bottom of it.
They will not fritter themselves away on trifles; they know how to solve problems and reach the goals they have set.Cholerics value intelligence, logic, knowledge, decisiveness, willpower and the overcoming of their own weaknesses, and they thoroughly dislike restrictions and sloppiness.
As people in the Active life position, geared towards social dominance, expansion and exploration, cholerics are more aggressive than the other temperaments. Introverts on the whole are harder to handle in their aggression, since they are less shy about showing it.
Extraverts are more socially dependent, so they try to sublimate their aggression, most often into excessive cheerfulness. Cholerics, as a rule, pay little attention to other people's boundaries, and in a conflict a choleric will not talk for long — they will move straight to action. Incidentally, women behave in much the same way.
If you look deeper still, at the level of the nervous and hormonal systems, then in cholerics the processes of excitation predominate, and the basic background of their life is made up of the emotions of sadness and anger. The choleric has a stable nervous system, but is easily aroused.
By somewhere around adolescence cholerics "settle" into one of three personality types:
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