I am Always Late

A human soul can be compared to a thick unread book with many pictures. Living in developed modern society, with its advanced communications and technologies, busy life, a variety of different relations and connections between its members, we have to know well how to treat people and how to act to be treated fine by those around us. So, we have to read many books-souls and obtain all necessary knowledge and information in order to reach comfort and balance in our everyday interactions with each other.

Sometimes it is not easy for us ourselves to understand, what and how we are managing with things, why we behave or react this or that particular way, and so on. Numerous psychological personality tests help us recognize our potential, increase our self-esteem and support our positive traits, our own hidden abilities and talents, our emotional tendencies and natural predispositions. One of such tests is known as True Colors Personality Test: a small psychological investigation, which can assist in identifying some special distinctive traits of a personality by categorizing all people into four groups, related to Green, Blue, Orange and Gold colors.

This test is not something new and it has quite a long history: the roots of categorizing all people according to their psychological portraits can lead us to 400 B.C., to the thoughts and ideas of the Greek physician Hippocrates. He found out and classified four dispositions of human character, which are know as choleric, melancholic, phlegmatic, and sanguine psychological types. Similarly, ancient astrologers created the system of twelve individual signs of the Zodiac based on the four principal elements of creation: Air, Water, Fire, and Earth.

During the first half of the XXth century many psychologists were researching and developing their own interpretations of old theories about four types of human temperament. In the 20s Carl Jung classified four psychological types under the names of Thinking, Feeling, Sensation, and Intuition. He used this concept for investigating and understanding of social behavior of human being. Jung’s works were translated into English and influenced a lot on a psychologist Katherine C. Briggs. Together with her daughter, Isabel Briggs-Myers, they created the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), which helps to recognize and describe 16 different psychological types of people.

In the 60s this problems have been investigated by clinical psychologist Dr. David Kelrsey, who returned to the concept of four types of people named “Portraits of Temperament”. He renamed the four known groups using ancient mythological prototypes (Dionysian, Apollonian, Promethean, and Epimethean). He presented them as four very different categories of people, who behave, think, understand, analyze different ways, who want different things and who must find the way of co-existing with each other. Kelrsey also tried to promote the ideas of self-discovery to wide public by publishing a book, Please, Understand Me, which had quite a good audience or readers.

Finally, in 1978 the main creator of True Color Concept Don Lowry finished his practical investigations and publicized the program, based on the works of Kelrsey, but rather simplified and adapted for practical usage. Lowry’s idea was to identify the types of personality behaviors with the help of colors: Green, Blue, Gold, and Orange. So, the True Colors Test simply offers participants to examine the colored cards and to choose the most pleasant color among those four to identify personal psychological type.

(to be continued)