Axis Ratio Method
The Book of Temperaments
The structure behind behavior.
Discover the Axis Ratio Method, by Igor R. O. Carneiro, and its reading of the natural dispositions that run through the way you act, feel, and relate to others. The work presents four temperamental genera and twelve species, and relates this structure to personal history, habits, and the formation of the virtues.
A reading of the person that takes structure, history, and freedom into account
Axis Ratio organizes the temperaments from two axes and a relation of rule between their dispositions. This approach helps you notice patterns that repeat, while taking into account each person’s history, circumstances, and habits.
Knowing a natural disposition can guide the work on yourself: noticing difficulties, cultivating capacities, and shaping more conscious choices. Personal growth also involves freedom, practice, and responsibility.
Understanding the dispositions
The book defines what a temperament is, where it comes from, and how it enters experience, before it talks about types.
Read chapter 1Observing patterns in concrete life
Two axes and four genera help you recognize what repeats in the way you confront, desire, keep, and measure.
Read about the axesCultivating habits and virtues
Each structure has its risks and its paths to maturity. The work is about formation, not a label.
Read about maturityWhat the method means by temperament
Temperament is not a psychological profile, nor a set of traits arranged for sorting people quickly. In Axis Ratio, it is a natural disposition of each person's constitution that makes one of the four matters of human action especially salient: the arduous, the pleasant, the transition from one state to another, or measure. Every human being faces difficulties, seeks what pleases, goes through changes and compares things; the temperamental difference lies in which of these matters tends to organize first what a person feels, fears, desires and does. It is in this sense that temperament is the original structure of personality, the first form of the human disposition, the one through which the embodied person comes to exist psychologically in the world.
The Book of Temperaments, chapter 1.
Two axes for understanding the dispositions
The Disinhibition–Inhibition axis organizes the relation between choleric and phlegmatic. The Extroversion–Introversion axis organizes the relation between sanguine and melancholic. On this second axis, the terms refer to the direction of experience: outward or inward. Sociability, shyness, and social ease also depend on other factors of personal life.
From these relations, Axis Ratio presents four genera and twelve valid species. Rule organizes each species; the two names of a mixed species do not represent a split into halves.
Disinhibition–Inhibition (choleric and phlegmatic): how a person stands before reality when it resists.
Extroversion–Introversion (sanguine and melancholic): where experience is directed, outward or inward.
Phlegmatic
Vegetality · Stability
Pole of inhibition · matter: the transition from one state to another.
Chapter 13Explore the twelve species
Names, order, and poles organize the reading of the model. The selection below only changes the explanation shown; it does not assess the reader.
Choleric
Sanguine
Phlegmatic
Melancholic
Pure Choleric
In the Pure Choleric, choleric action organizes the form alone, with no other capacity entering its makeup. The sequence tends to be simple: obstacle, mobilization, impact, result.
Read the sectionIllustrative example
The same obstacle can call up different responses
Imagine a task that meets resistance. One person may feel a readier impulse to confront the obstacle; another may first seek to reduce the conflict and rearrange the conditions for acting. Observing these tendencies raises questions about natural disposition, habits, and the concrete situation. A single reaction is not enough to conclude what someone’s temperament is.
Natural capacities and the formation of the virtues
Each genus has a natural affinity with the matter of a cardinal virtue. This affinity offers a possibility of formation, which is realized through choices, practice, and habits. All temperaments can acquire all the virtues, just as they can fall into different vices.
| Genus | Virtue whose matter finds a natural affinity |
|---|---|
| Choleric | Fortitude |
| Sanguine | Temperance |
| Phlegmatic | Prudence |
| Melancholic | Justice |
The relations above belong to the philosophical and moral reading of Axis Ratio. They do not make any virtue exclusive to one genus.
History of the temperaments
The names are old. The explanation fell.
The four temperaments were born of a medicine of humors and elements that science dismantled between the 16th and 19th centuries. Much of what still circulates repeats that explanation or swaps it for symbols.
- 5th c. BCFour humors in Greek medicine
- 4th c. ADEach humor gets a portrait of character
- 1628–1869Harvey, Lavoisier, and chemistry bring down humors and elements
- 2020Axis Ratio: no humors, no elements, no symbols as cause
Start with the book
This means that temperament does not sit at the level of the mask, of occasional behavior or of the social role. It lies deeper, because it belongs to the initial way in which the soul, in informing a concrete body, receives reality, reacts to it, organizes its own energy, perceives threats and opportunities, forms habits and begins to build the personality. In other words, temperament is the first structural form of the embodied soul in its sensitive, affective and practical life: the ground on which a personal history will be built.
Excerpt from chapter 1. The public edition has 15 chapters.
Author
Igor R. O. Carneiro
Igor Rafael Oliveira Carneiro is a lawyer, a poet, and the author of the Axis Ratio Method and of The Book of Temperaments. He was born in Campina Grande, Brazil, lives in João Pessoa, and has been developing his method of the temperaments since 2020.
Meet the authorExplore your temperament with an assessment guided by the method
The assessment offers a starting point for observing your dispositions in light of Axis Ratio. Answer with the recurring patterns of your life in mind, and read the result together with the method’s explanations. Its purpose is educational and interpretive; it does not provide a clinical diagnosis.
Frequently asked questions
It is the method by Igor R. O. Carneiro presented in this work, which organizes a reading of the temperaments into two axes, four genera, and twelve species.
Temperamental disposition takes part in personal life. History, context, habits, character, and freedom also influence how it is expressed.
In the method, extroversion and introversion indicate the direction of experience. Social ease and shyness are not direct equivalents of these poles.
A species is organized by rule. The first term indicates the ruling genus, with no percentage split into two halves.
The assessment is educational and interpretive in purpose. It does not provide a clinical diagnosis.
Natural affinity points to a capacity. Virtue is formed through practice and habits; everyone can develop every virtue.
The work takes a philosophical and Christian framework when it deals with the soul, the virtues, the fall, and moral formation. Readers will find this foundation developed in the corresponding chapters, along with the distinctions between tradition, the method’s interpretation, and open research questions.
Start with the chapter “What temperaments are” and move on to the axes. Then explore genera and species on that basis.
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Copyright
The Book of Temperaments is a work by Igor Rafael Oliveira Carneiro. An earlier version has a copyright registration with the Câmara Brasileira do Livro, and the current version has been deposited for registration with the Fundação Biblioteca Nacional. The author’s right arises with the creation of the work; registration documents the deposited version and its date.
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