The Four Most Basic Personality Types - Early Childhood Development

The extrovert and introvert personality types are often thought of as the primary social personality types. I would like to put forth my theory that they are not social personality types at all and the first, most basic, social personality types come after the extrovert/introvert perception develops.

Early Childhood Development: The Extrovert and the Introvert


The first development in personality has everything to do with survival and security. It is the first either/or response to the world, where we separate experiences into two categories; good things or bad things. This is a forward/back orientation in space/time and the creation of our first boundary line, where we distinguish ourselves as something apart from the outside environment. Newborns can not separate themselves from their experience at first, everything is one sea of consciousness and there is no "I" to experience "That." As a newborn eases its way into the world, the first thing it becomes aware of is that there is a boundary line between itself and the environment. Our early experiences will imprint our feeling towards the world as somewhere on the good/bad scale; so we either seek or we retreat from novelty, stimuli and new experiences. I think this reaction to the world is where we get the introvert and extrovert personality types, in varying degrees.

An autistic child is an extreme form of the introvert, where the child retreats into his or her world because the outside world is imprinted as extremely bad. On the other end of the spectrum, there are the types of people who actively seek out new experiences all over the world.  They believe the world is inherently good and will do anything to experience as much of it as they can.  These types of people tend to always be mobile and never settle down in one place for very long. The basic attitude of trust or suspicion and the imprint that was made in early childhood tends to hold solid where ever we initially make it and it is very difficult to change. Problems with this initial imprint are closely associated with abuse of sedatives like Opium or Morphine, which bring the user back to a newborn-like, floating consciousness.

Early Childhood Development: The Four Personality Types

The second development in personality is territorial and associated with a domination/submission dichotomy, as well as an emotional sense of feeling "Up" or "Down." In this case, dominant behavior is a sense of oneself being good, while submission behavior is a sense of oneself being bad. I think this development in personality arises out of the infants transition from crawling to walking; when they become an active member in the family and begin to explore the territory, no longer dependent on others for mobility. The combination of the forward/backward and up/down orientations give us a two dimensional Cartesian Plane that we can divide into the four basic personality types;

1. I am good and you are bad.
2. I am bad and you are good.
3. We are both good.
4. We are both bad.

This stage begins to define our, often unconscious, social attitudes towards other people and draws the second boundary line between ourselves and the people we interact with. I believe this is the first real development of social personality types and the extrovert/introvert development has more to do with environment. These four personality types shape our daily interactions with other people as we create a expectation of interaction before we even begin to socialize. The primary drug associated with this stage is alcohol. If you want to catch of glimpse of someone's personality type, observe them while they are intoxicated. The aggressive (I'm good, you're bad) or emotionally depressed (we are both bad) alcoholic is typical of this stage. They are the most likely to abuse alcohol and the hardest to communicate with. The “we are both good” personality type tends to drink socially without any problems and communicate well, even when intoxicated.  The "I'm bad and you're good" personality type tends to use alcohol as a social lubricant because they want to feel good.

These personality types are not limited to extreme positions and can be thought of as having varying degrees of intensity. Certain situations can trigger a temporary change in position; going from the "we are both good" attitude to the "I'm good and you're bad" attitude can be beneficial after someone is identified as being dangerous or toxic. The basic personality types are not, however, about specific circumstances.  They are initial reactions, delivered by the unconscious, before a social interaction even occurs. These imprints from early childhood usually stay pretty rigid, unless there is a shocking experience that allows for a temporary re-imprinting. There are also other techniques to temporarily lift the imprint and re-imprint, such as meditation, yoga, entheogens or religious/spiritual experiences.  However, most people will go through much of their life with the same personality type they imprinted in early childhood.