ABSTRACT
The belief that physique, personality and disease are interlinked has an impressive history dating back to the Ancient Greeks, who believed, for example, that the melancholic, or depressive, personality was associated with an excess of black bile. In a similar vein, the works of Shakespeare also reflected the belief that body type was linked to personality. For example, Caesar is heard to comment on Cassius, ‘Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look; he thinks too much: such men are dangerous’ (Julius Caesar act 1, scene 2). More recently, Sheldon (1954) equated the slightly plump, or endomorphic, body shape with a relaxed and sociable temperament, and Alexander (1950) proposed that specific types of psychodynamic conflict could result in certain types of disease in individuals who were genetically predisposed, arguing, for example, that genetically vulnerable individuals would develop peptic ulcers if they frequently experienced conflict between autonomy and dependency needs.
