The sanguine is not defined by partying or by cheerfulness. There are shy sanguines, sanguines who go through periods of deep sadness and sanguines who turn down an invitation because they have a duty to fulfill, and none of these things makes them stop being what they are. What defines them is a particular openness to what is good in the world, and a tendency to enter into that good, to take part in it, to make it circulate.
The pleasant and participation
What the sanguine structure makes salient is the pleasant, understood in a broad sense: a conversation, a person, an experience, a place, a meal, a song, something new, a chance to be together. In any situation, the sanguine seems to ask, before anything else, what there is here that is good, interesting or worth sharing. And they do not only perceive the pleasant; they tend to enter into the experience, to take part, to be part of it. That is why people matter to them in a special way, because people are what offer response, novelty, presence and a good that is lived together. The method calls the operation with which they respond to this matter expansion, that is, opening the pleasant to presence and participation, and pictures it as warmth and the radiance of the sun.
Extroversion is not talking a lot
Saying that the sanguine is extroverted calls for a distinction. In the method's sense, extroversion is not talking a lot or liking to be seen, but having one's experience turned outward: the sanguine is renewed through people, stimuli, participation and the outside world. A sanguine can be shy in a room full of strangers and still be structurally extroverted, because it is from outside that they receive energy. This does not mean that sociability is beside the point. Extroversion and sociability are distinct things, but sociability is one of the strongest manifestations of the sanguine, and prolonged isolation tends to weigh on them in a way the other temperaments do not always understand.
The capacity to cheer up
The sanguine has a peculiar capacity to regain good spirits from things others would consider small: a good lunch, a conversation, a bit of simple news, a sunny day. This does not mean they do not suffer. In my observation over the years, the sanguine can suffer a great deal, but suffering tends to have less of a monopoly over their affective life, and after a disappointment the experience seems to lose weight more quickly than it does in the melancholic. The small possibilities of everyday life come back to compete for space with the negative, and they often recover their good humor even on their own.
This is what is usually called "sanguine illusion," and the phrase is misleading. It is not a matter of falseness or delusion, but of an ease in perceiving what is pleasant, interesting or recoverable in a situation. And the sanguine often does not merely perceive that good: they produce it, because their own liveliness improves the place they are in.
What the sanguine wants from people
The sanguine, especially in the pure form, does not need to hold the place of greatest competence or greatest authority to be satisfied. They accept someone else's leadership and remain fine, as long as they stay included, received, liked and part of what is happening. The question the choleric puts to people is often "which of us is more capable?"; the sanguine's question is a different one, and far more disarmed: do you like me?
That is why the sanguine's deepest wound is not being received: exclusion, rejection, isolation, the loss of one's place in the group. Curiously, they can suffer intensely from not being liked without concluding that they are worth less as a person, which sets them apart from the melancholic, for whom comparison usually strikes at their very worth. Suffering from rejection is not a vice. The moral question appears only when the desire to keep being received begins to govern choices that should obey greater goods.
Impulsiveness toward the pleasant
Just as the choleric loses the pause before what challenges them, the sanguine loses the pause before what pleases them: the invitation, the fun, the lively group, the experience available right now. A person can be very little given to confrontation and still make imprudent decisions before the pleasant, and that is why a sanguine's gentleness should not be confused with prudence. They are not usually imprudent from an excess of combat, but from an excess of saying yes.
What the sanguine is not
The sanguine is not simply the cheerful, the shallow or the fickle one. Liking attention, praise, beauty or love is not vanity, just as liking people is not frivolity. Nor is it true that the sanguine has no depth: they do, only their experience renews itself outward instead of holding itself inward. What remains sanguine through all its forms is the ease of finding a way into what appears pleasant and shareable, and the tendency to renew life through contact with the outside.
Temperance: the capacity and the virtue
In the created order, the sanguine has an aptitude for the matter of temperance, which is the pleasant, and a taste for the good that is neither gloomy nor suspicious. Receiving joy, love and welcome is a real good, and the sanguine structure makes hospitality, reconciliation and attention to what is still worth living easier. But none of these acts proves temperance on its own, because the virtue does not lie in liking the pleasant, but in keeping it subordinate to the true good, even when giving it up is costly.
Temperance does not destroy pleasure; it frees the person from being governed by it. And here lies the sanguine's asymmetry: the matter they have in abundance, which is the taste for the pleasant, is precisely the matter that temperance must order. They have an ease for joy, not for moderation, and so temperance, in them, is less a ready-made gift than a conquest. The question that measures their maturity is this: when what is pleasant comes into conflict with what is good, can I say no?
The fall: love that asks to be loved
In the wounded condition, the warmth that was created to radiate starts asking for a return. This is sanguine egoization: "being loved is good" becomes "my presence has to keep being well received," and reception, which is a good, becomes a condition of identity. The most exact definition of vanity I know is also the simplest: vanity is the excessive love of being loved. The deformation begins when the need to be received starts to govern what the person shows, says, leaves out, defends or abandons. The vain sanguine no longer says what they think, but what will please; no longer stays where they should, but where they are wanted; and when approval disappears, they change their opinion, their company or their path, sometimes without noticing.
The underlying fear of this fall is that of finding no echo, and the thesis the sanguine self builds is usually this: I have to be welcomed, loved, wanted and affirmed. From this come the vices that go with it: dispersion, the search for stimulation so as not to be left alone with silence, the difficulty of sticking with what gives no immediate response and the temptation to trade an uncomfortable truth for a pleasant atmosphere.
The mature sanguine
The sanguine's maturity does not consist in losing pleasure, but in gaining freedom before it. They still cheer up, still like people and still enter into experiences, but they can now lose approval, company, pleasure or their place in the group without losing their faithfulness to the good along with it. They bear absence, rejection, boredom and renunciation, and discover that they are still whole.
It is a joy without dependence, and perhaps it is the most Christian form of joy, because it no longer depends on being returned in order to exist. The mature sanguine is still the one who warms the room on walking in, but now also warms the room where no one applauds them, and so learns, slowly, to love as they were first loved: asking nothing in return.
The species of the sanguine
The sanguine governs three species: the sanguine-choleric, the pure sanguine and the sanguine-phlegmatic. It also takes part, in the service of another end, in the choleric-sanguine and the phlegmatic-sanguine.