Exuberant Personality Type

The interests of the Exuberant Personality Type include:

• enjoying immediate physical pleasure through good food, drink, sex, etc. (Miles)
• experiencing heightened emotional intensity through love, risk, danger, art, conquest, etc. (ibid)
• developing or reaffirming a realistically based self-control (ibid)

Main Interests of the Exuberant Personality Type

1. enjoying pleasure
   
   
2. enjoying intense experiences
   
   
3. being active
   
   
4. having a positive view of past and future achievement
   
   
5. being gregarious
   
   
6. being able to go without sleep
   
   
7. having confidence in yourself
   
   
8. being productive and producing high quality work
   
   
9. seeking others as romantic and sexual partners
   
   
10. occasionally spending a great deal of money
    
    
11. using alcohol or drugs for stimulation or relaxation
    
    
12. holding friends and loved ones to high standards
    
    
13. traveling and moving to new locations and residences
    
    
14. being knowledgeable, skillful, expert, and masterful
    
    
15. being committed to creative work or productivity

Melvin C. Miles (2002) Hemingway: An Introductory Overview.

Characteristic Traits and Behaviors

The following ten traits and characteristics are typical of the Exuberant personality type.

1. Mood swings. Those of the Exuberant temperament tend to experience a greater range of emotion than those of any other type. They are very emotionally reactive.
   
   
2. Artistic inclinations. The Exuberant type is the most inclined of all the types to be involved with the fine arts, music, or literature (Keirsey, 204). They take an artistic approach to all aspects of their lives.
   
   
3. Independent work. Like "the majority of poets, novelists, composers, and to a lesser extent, of painters and sculptors," those of the Exuberant type "are bound to spend a great deal of their time alone (Storr, ix)."
   
   
4. Relationships secondary. Those of the Exuberant temperament "are quite likely to choose relationships which will further their work rather than relationships which are intrinsically rewarding, and their spouses may well find that marital relations take second place (Storr, 107)."
   
   
5. Great productivity. Persons of the Exuberant type are highly disciplined, gifted with superior powers of concentration, and capable of producing great quantities of high quality work; they also enjoy frequent periods of recreation and inactivity.
   
   
6. Disinhibition. They are hedonistic and impulsive; "they live Epicurean lives in the here and now, and as gracefully as possible (Keirsey, 204)."
   
   
7. Keen perceptions. The Exuberant temperament is especially attuned to color, line, texture, shading - touch, motion, seeing, and hearing in harmony. The senses of Exuberant individuals seem more keenly tuned than those of others (Keirsey, 205).
   
   
8. Kindness (Keirsey, 205). Although those of the Exuberant type may adopt an aggressive, tough exterior, they are remarkably gentle, kind, and generous.
   
   
9. Extroversion and introversion. The interpersonal conduct of those of the Exuberant type alternates between the greatest extremes of sociability and social reticence.
   
   
10. Love of nature. In many individuals of the Exuberant type there "may be found an instinctive longing for the natural, the pastoral, the bucolic. They are quite at home in the wilds, and nature seems to welcome them (Keirsey, 206)."

This description owes a debt to several ideas of Cory Caplinger (Lifexplore), especially the names of the first two characteristics.

Sources:

Keirsey, David, and Marilyn Bates. Please Understand Me: Character and Temperament Types. 3rd ed. Del Mar: Prometheus Nemesis, 1978.

Storr, Anthony. Solitude: a return to the self. New York: Ballantine, 1988.

Idealized Image

I did conceive of "character strengths and virtues" in a positive way as Martin Seligman does in his Positive Psychology, but now see them as images of perfection that inflate the idealized self theorized by Karen Horney.

Character Strengths and Virtues (what the Cyclothymic type is proud of)

1. Creativity, Originality, Humorousness, Wittiness.
2. Energy, Diligence, Studiousness, Attentiveness, Persistence, Perseverance, Purposefulness, Resoluteness, Zealousness, Enthusiasm; Dutifulness, Honorableness; Vigilance, Alertness, Sensibility, Intelligence, Resourcefulness, Wisdom; Firmness, Tenacity, Independence.
3. Refinement, Magnificence.
4. Generosity, Liberality, Courtesy, Graciousness; Charity, Kindness, Affability, Empathy, Sensitivity, Concern, Friendliness; Tenderness, Agreeableness, Fraternity.
5. Sincerity, Straightforwardness, Integrity, Justice, Fairness.
6. Confidence, Self-Esteem, Hope, Cheerfulness, Joyfulness, Sociability.
7. Naturalness.

This profile was derived from Cawley's 23 "Virtue Subclusters" in Michael J. Cawley III, James E. Martin, John A. Johnson (1999), A Virtues Approach to Personality.

Aggressiveness, competitive spirit, complexity, courage, courtliness, decency, discreetness, emotional honesty (genuineness), gentleness, humor, intelligence, judgment, kindness and generosity, leadership skills, loyalty valued, magnetism, modesty, protectiveness, saintliness, self-confidence, sensitivity, seriousness, toughness, zest for life (Brian, 353).

These are some of the "Personal characteristics" of Ernest Hemingway indexed by Denis Brian in The True Gen.

Signature Strengths*

"Creativity [originality, ingenuity]: Thinking of novel and productive ways to conceptualize and do things; includes artistic achievement but is not limited to it

"Bravery [valor]: Not shrinking from threat, challenge, difficulty, or pain; speaking up for what is right even if there is opposition; acting on convictions even if unpopular; includes physical bravery but is not limited to it

"Vitality [zest, enthusiasm, vigor, energy]: Approaching life with excitement and energy; Not doing things halfway or halfheartedly; living life as an adventure; feeling alive and activated"

"Kindness [generosity, nurturance, care, compassion, altruistic love, "niceness"]: Doing favors and good deeds for others; helping them; taking care of them

"Leadership: Encouraging a group of which one is a member to get things done and at the same [time maintain] good relations within the group; organizing group activities and seeing that they happen"

"Appreciation of beauty and excellence [awe, wonder, elevation]: Noticing and appreciating beauty, excellence, and/or skilled performance in various domains of life, from nature to art to mathematics to science to everyday experience" (Peterson & Seligman, 29, 30).

* Selected from Christopher Peterson and Martin E. P. Seligman, (2004). Character Strengths and Virtues: A Handbook and Classification. Oxford: Oxford UP.

Artistry

Artistic: "1. Of, relating to, or befitting art or artists. 2. Appreciative of or sensitive to art or beauty." (AHD)

Synonyms: "aesthetic"

"artistic, aesthetic are often understood as equivalent terms, especially when used in such collocations as the artistic or aesthetic satisfaction; artistic or aesthetic standards or values; for artistic or aesthetic reasons. But artistic may stress the point of view of the artist or of one who actually produces a work of art, who thinks in terms of technique, or the relationship of details to the design of the whole, or of the effects to be gained and who therefore regards beauty as a thing that results from his attention to these matters and that is his creation. By extension artistic may imply also the point of view of one who studies or judges art objectively from the artist's angle. On the other hand aesthetic stresses the point of view of one who contemplates a finished work of art or beauty that exists and who thinks in terms of the effect it has upon him and especially of the sensations it stimulates and the feelings it excites, Strictly, the artistic temperament shows itself in a urge to fashion or to express and to create out of materials, words, or sounds the beautiful thing that the artist designs or conceives: the aesthetic temperament shows itself in responsiveness to beauty wherever it is found, and by contrast, in aversion to that which is ugly. Artistic satisfaction is the gratification that comes to one who can look at a work of art (his own or another's) and call it good: aesthetic satisfaction is the content that accompanies the enjoyment of beauty for its own sake and independently of all other considerations. For aesthetic , largely because of its connection with aesthetics, the branch of philosophy dealing with beauty, usually implies a distinction between that which is beautiful and that which is moral or useful or merely pleasing. Artistic standards are therefore the tests of perfection in a work of art which artists and critics have accepted: aesthetic standards are the usually subjective criteria which have been set up by aestheticians or be the individual to enable him to distinguish the beautiful from the merely pleasing or gratifying." (MW, 64)

Analogous:

Antonyms:

Contrasted:

1. Artist: "1. One who creates works of art; especially a painter or sculptor." (AHD)

Synonyms: "artificer, artisan, architect"

"1 Artist, artificer, artisan, architect mean one who makes something beautiful or useful or both. In their wider senses the words are often confused. The earliest and the continuing implication of artist is skill or proficiency ... : it was formerly applied to anyone who made or did things requiring learning and skill; thus, a teacher, a philosopher, a physician, a scientist, and alchemist, or a craftsman was called an artist ... Gradually, however, the word has come to be associated with those whose aim is to produce something which gives aesthetic pleasure, first with musicians, dancers, actors, and later with poets, painters, and sculptors. The two ideas of skill and the aim to give pleasure were combined, so that since the early nineteenth century artist (when it does not mean specifically a painter) is usually applied to a gifted person who works in the fine arts and especially to one who reveals his skill, taste, and power to create beautiful things ... Artificer still retains its earliest meaning of one who makes something by means of art and skill. Originally it was applied especially to mechanics. In current use it suggests craftsmanship and is applied especially to those who work in some plastic material which responds to the exercise of skill, taste, and ingenuity in contrivance ... Artisan was formerly and is still sometimes applied to the practitioner of any art and especially an industrial art chiefly in distinction from an artist ... This difference between artisan and artist widened as artist came to imply the power to create or produce beautiful things and became restricted in its application to a worker in the fine arts. In current use artisan is a general term almost equal to workman and names one engaged in a craft, a handicraft, or a trade; it comprehends in its range all the skills often subsumed as skilled labor. In extended use it is still often contrasted with artist, the latter now implying imaginative power and a passion for perfection, the former mere mechanical industry ... Architect has never lost its basic implication of a master builder, though it has come to stress more the designing of something to be built than actual participation in its erection. Specifically it designates a person whose profession it is to plan buildings or structures in detail and to exercise supervision over their construction in order to see that the design is executed in every particular. In extended use the word usually implies the power to conceive a thing as a whole and in detail in advance of its coming into being as well as to control its execution. It is often applied specifically to God as the Creator. Although it comes close to artist in its implications of imaginative power and constructive ability, it differs from the former in its greater emphasis upon design than upon execution ... "

Analogous: "craftsman, workman ... : creator, maker: writer, composer, author" (63-64)

Antonyms:

Contrasted:

2. Artist: "2. Any person who performs his work as if it were an art. 3. An artiste." (AHD)

Synonyms: "artiste, virtuoso, expert, adept, wizard"

"Expert, adept, artist, artiste, virtuoso, wizard are comparable when they designate a person who shows mastery in a subject, an art, or a profession or who reveals extraordinary skill in execution, performance, or technique. Expert implies successful experience, broad knowledge of one's subject, and distinguished achievements; it is applied specifically to one who is recognized as an authority in his field ... Adept connotes understanding of the mysteries of some art or craft or penetration into secrets beyond the reach of exact science ... It tends to imply [subtlety] or ingenuity ... Artist stresses creative imagination and extraordinary skill in execution or in giving outward form to what the mind conceives. More than any other word in this group it stresses skill in performance and the factors (as perfection in workmanship, loving attention to detail, and a feeling for material) that are pertinent thereto ... Artiste applies especially to public performers (as actors, singers, and dancers) but may occasionally be applied to workers in crafts where adeptness and taste are indispensable to distinguished achievement ... Virtuoso, though often close to artist in meaning, stresses the outward display of great technical skill or brilliance in execution rather than the inner passion for perfection or beauty. It is applied chiefly to performers on musical instruments and especially to pianists, violinists, and cellists ... Wizard implies such skill and knowledge or such excellence in performance as seems to border on the magical ... "

Analogous: [master, teacher, tutor]

Antonyms: "amateur"

Contrasted: tyro, dabbler, dilettante ... novice, apprentice, probationer" (311)

The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (1981, c.1969). William Morris, Ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

Merriam-Webster (1984). Webster's New Dictionary of Synonyms: A Dictionary of Discriminated Synonyms with Antonyms and Analogous and Contrasted Words. Springfield, MA: Merriam-Webster.

Careers and Jobs for Exuberant type

Google Answers: selecting the right career for me

This list represents careers and jobs people of the Artistic type tend to enjoy doing.

bookkeeper
clerical supervisor
dental assistant
physical therapist
mechanic
radiology technologist
surveyor
chef
forester
geologist
landscaper designer
crisis hotline operator
teacher: elementary
beautician
typist
jeweler
gardener
potter
painter
botanist
marine biologist
social worker

Source: U.S. Department of Interior, Career Manager - ISFP.

Noteworthy examples of the Exuberant personality type

Many people (and not just those of the Exuberant personality type) have exuberant traits or behave in a exuberant manner. The traits and behaviors of the Exuberant personality type are not so inflexible and maladaptive or the cause of such significant subjective distress or functional impairment as to constitute

Noteworthy examples of the Exuberant personality type are:

Index of noteworthy examples

Honore de Balzac | Ludwig van Beethoven | George Brush | Dick Butkus | George Gordon, Lord Byron | Sir Winston_Churchill | Rosemary Clooney | Francis Ford Coppola | Sir Arthur Conan Doyle | Patty Duke | Amelia Earhart | Larry Flynt | St. Francis of Assisi | Vincent van Gogh | Ernest Hemingway | Thornton Wilder

  "Gradually it has become clear to me what every great philosophy so far has been: namely, the personal confession of its author and a kind of involuntary and unconscious memoir" - Friedrich Nietzsche.

I hypothesize that the personality theories of personality theorists best describe themselves and those of their own type.

Ernest Hemingway

• Hemingway: An Introductory Overview

  Values. For Hemingway, since there are no divinely sanctioned absolute values, a thing, an experience, or an activity is valuable to the extent that it gives one a measure of immediate physical pleasure (good food, drink, sex, etc.); heightened emotional intensity (love, risk, danger, art, conquest, etc.); or to the extent that it helps one develop and/or reaffirm a realistically based self-control, and thus gives a measure of purpose, order, and ultimately, dignity to one's behavior and to one's life. Such values are immediate and practical in two senses: first, because they do give one pleasure, intensity, and self-control; and second, because such values have no significance beyond the pleasure, intensity, and self-control they give.

• Yahoo! image search results for Ernest Hemingway
  
  
• Ernest Hemingway's Search for Glory
  
  
• Confiteor Hominem: Ernest Hemingway's Religion of Man By Joseph Waldmeir - questiaschool.com [requires membership]
  
  
• Hemingway's Cult of Masculinity: The Search for the Divine by R.M. Garino
  
  
• Hemingway's Gospel of Manhood
  
  
• Ernest Hemingway and the Failure of Nihilism - Chris R. Tame
  
  
• Books: The Hero of the Code - Time Magazine. Jul. 14, 1961
  
  

• The pathological pride of Ernest Hemingway

  Epictetus speaks of pride:

  "Do not take pride in any excellence that is not your own. If a horse were to say proudly, 'I am beautiful,' one could put up with that. But when you say proudly, 'I have a beautiful horse,' remember that you are boasting about something good that belongs to the horse. What, then, belongs to you? The use of impressions. Whenever you are in accordance with nature regarding the way you use impressions, then be proud, for then you will be proud of a good that is your own" (Handbook 6, trans. Seddon).

  Pride in things which are not our own is a pathos, "a species of pleasure" (Seddon, forthcoming, pg. 94).

  Carlos Baker (pg. viii) describes Ernest Hemingway:

  "There is the man driven by pride, which he often defined as a deadly sin yet embraced as his personal and well-loved daemon. He was proud of his manhood, his literary and athletic skills, his staying and recuperative powers, his reputation, his capacity for drink, his prowess as fisherman and wing shot, his earnings, his self-reliance, his wit, his poetry, his medical and military knowledge, his skill in map reading, navigation, and the sizing up of terrain."

  It looks like at some point Hemingway judged that the loss of his skills and powers was bad and that he could not go on. He committed suicide.
  
  

  Carlos Baker (1969). Ernest Hemingway: a life story. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons.
  
  
  

• Hemingway's passions:

  • Eating
  • Drinking
  • Love
  • Sex
  • Fishing
  • Hunting
  • War
  • Writing
  • Ritual Ceremonies
  • Bullfighting
  • Traveling
  
  
  
  
• H.R. Stoneback (pg. 216) writes: "The design of Hemingway's life and work, then, reveals a pattern of freedom and motion, place and placelessness, or deracination and the lost authentic place, of the constant quest for and pilgrimage to the hoped-for numinous place."
  
  H.R. Stoneback (1999). "Freedom and Motion, Place and Placelessness: On the Road in Hemingway's America" in Hemingway and the Natural World, Ed. Robert F. Fleming. Moscow, ID: University of Idaho.
  
  
  

• Beliefs/Attitudes (constructed as statements):

  • It's better not to think, because sometimes you think and you can't stop and your brain gets to racing like a flywheel with the weight gone (Young, 110-11).
  • The universe is hostile and bleak, and man is subjected to death, infected by malaise, and rendered powerless (Backman, 132).
  • In the very beginnings of life there is unreason--undermining existence, estranging and traumatizing man (132-33).
  • In order to defend against internal and external threats, I've had to shrink the emotional, intellectual, and spiritual elements of my being (133).
  • It's better not to think about things, but to just concentrate life in physical being (133).
  • I'm content to withdraw and remain a loner at heart (133).
  • The world is meaningless; I have a feeling of primal rejection (133).
  • My religious experience is reduced essentially to an outcry for help in a time of need (133).
  • I am not able to make the kind of authentic relationship to others or to a divine power which would give purpose to my life and sustain my spirit in its struggles (133).
  • My art serves not only to exorcise anxieties but, by creating another reality, to justify me (132).
  • My code enables me to hold tight against pain and death and to function and survive without surrendering my essential pride (132).
  • The creating of life through art disarms and metamorphoses death (132).
  • Art is the compelled and profound response of the conscious and unconscious being to the experience of death (132).
  • By controlled aggression man gratifies his need to achieve union and to retaliate and kill (121).
  • The world breaks everyone...those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially (123).
  • Our love is a pact against the others--there's only us two in the world and there's all the rest of them (123).
  • I do not care what it is all about. All I want to know is how to live in it (123).
  • I'm afraid of nothing (124).
  • I need to affirm myself through the mastering of fear by courage (124).
  • The only way to counteract the feeling of helplessness is to strike back (124).
  • I have a need to kill. When a person is still in rebellion against death he has pleasure in taking to himself one of the Godlike attributes; that of giving it (125).
  
  
  

  Backman, Melvin (1979). Death and Birth in Hemingway. The Stoic Strain in American Literature: Essays in Honour of Marston LaFrance. Ed., Duane J. MacMillan. Toronto: University of Toronto.
  

  Young, Philip (1966). Ernest Hemingway: A Reconsideration. University Park: Pennsylvania State UP.
  
  
  

• Moodswing : Dr Fieve on Depression

  Perhaps the best-known modern manic-depressive writer is Ernest Hemingway, whose adventures during his highs and lows made national headlines. His career illustrates the benefits and pitfalls of the creative manic-depressive. Hemingway's constitution was such that his abundant energy made it excruciating for him to stay still. When he was not writing, he was fighting, or deep-sea fishing, or hunting--doing anything so long as it involved movement. Hemingway's terrifically active periods alternated with his depressions. Whatever he did, he did violently. When he was depressed, self-doubt would overcome him. Hemingway's heavy drinking during most of his adult life might be considered his own form of self-treatment. For a period of forty-two days, while he was a correspondent in the Second World War, he slept only two and a half hours a night.

  Hemingway's first serious depression after the First World War, came when a woman rejected him, and he then broke off all close ties, including with his family. In 1925 he worked furiously on A Farewell to Arms. Beginning in 1926 he fell into a depression that lasted for nineteen months. Later he wrote Scott Fitzgerald, "I am no longer in the bumping-off stage." But what he called his "black-ass days" increased in frequency after the Second World War Hemingway had a sense of mission or a sense of himself as the hero. In his manic periods he would become convinced that he was immortal. The number of his injuries sustained in various plane crashes, automobile collisions, and fist-fights are legion. He was extremely disciplined as a writer and could work from dawn to 2:00 P.M., then go out fishing or hunting and still be ready to go at two the next morning, when everyone else was too exhausted to move. Toward the end of his life his rages and elated spirits were always likely to cost bystanders their front teeth. In 1960 he was hospitalized. This must have been most difficult to accomplish since he had always hated psychiatrists. He is known to have had three courses of electroshock treatment later at the Mayo Clinic. He became paranoid toward the end and thought that the Internal Revenue Service was out to get him. According to his brother's biography, he killed himself because his body, always important to him, was falling apart. The likelihood is, however, that he was also drinking and in another serious depression as well. His brother described him as a consummately impulsive individual all of his life, who talked constantly and without inhibition. Like Van Gogh, he became violent with others, and finally with himself. Hemingway's mood disorder was complicated by the fact that he styled himself "the American male hero," and tried to live up to this self-imposed image. His father had also committed suicide (pp. 44-45, 1989).

  
  
  

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