A Factorial Study of Some Morphological and Psychological Aspects of Human Constitution

i.Introduction. â€”Since Hippocrates and his Roman followers described the habitus apoplecticus and the hab'itus phthisicus, linking these autithetical physical types with certain temperamental peculiarities and with susceptibility to specific diseases, much research has been carried out in an attempt (@)to prove the existence of physical types and to discover their nature, and (2) to investigate the relation of these types to temperamental traits. This work has done much to clarify the issues at stake. Four main schools have contributed to the development of a consistent body of knowledge in this field of the relation of body-build and temperament, each making its specific contribution. Rostan (24) and the French school generally may be credited with the elaboration of the tripartite scheme of body-type (digestive, muscular, and respiratory-cerebral) which has recently been brought back to favour by Kretschmer (i8) and Sheldon (25). The Italian school, founded by Giovanni, introduced the idea of measurement and statistical analysis into the field, and Viola (29) elaborated his morphological index on this basis, dividing the population into microsplanchnic, normosplanchnic and megalosplanchnic types. The German school, beginning with Carus (@) and Beneke (i), added the important theory that body-build is correlated with mental illness. The Anglo-American school, following the lead of Galton and Pearson, used the concept of correlation to determine more strictly the actual relation between isolated body measurements and single psychological traits (Patterson (22)); they also criticized extensively the very basis of â€œ¿ typeâ€• theory, substituting a system of normally-distributed â€œ¿ traitsâ€•instead. In order to determine the nature of the main â€œ¿ traitsâ€• in the cognitive, conative and affective fields, the statistical procedure of Factorial Analysis (Burt (2), Thom son (27); Thurstone (28)) has been elaborated, which enables the investigator to isolate the fundamental vectors underlying his measurements in these respective fields. Recently, factorial studies have been made in the field of body measurement (Cohen (@,6 and 7), Mullen (20), Hammond (ii)), and the results suggested to us that this method might be useful in (a) determining the main types of body-build, (b) making it possible to derive an index of body-type free from the arbitrariness with which many of the indices in@the past have been constructed, and (c) deriving correlations, not between isolated measurements of morphological and psychological variables, but between morphological and psychological syndromes or trait constellations. Although we found previous analyses of great interest and of suggestive value, we considered it necessary to carry out a special analysis of our own, because previous work had certain drawbacks which made the conclusions arrived at inapplicable in detail to our own sample. The number of persons measured had sometimes been rather small; the number of measurements taken had not always been sufficient; â€ ̃¿ @ and the samples studied (students, psychotics, adolescent boys and girls) bore little resemblance to the material with which we had to deal. The fact that in spite of such wide differences in sampling and procedure our results are in close essential agreement with those of other students encourages us to believe that the factors isolated are truly fundamental in the determination of body-build.