The Cerebral Type: “The Thinker” – Social and Emotional Makeup

The keynote of this type is meditation and all the mental processes that fall under it, such as thinking, contemplating and reflecting. Alimentives live to eat, Thoracics live to feel, Musuclars live to act, Osseouses to stabilize, but Cerebrals live to meditate. Planning, imagining, dreaming, day-dreaming, visualizing and going over the manifold possibilities, probabilities and potentialities of many things repeatedly go through his mind.

When Cerebrals plan, they are likely to overlook the question of practicability in the thing he is planning. He tends to dream dreams that are impossible of accomplishing. Cerebrals are the dreamers. However, one of their shortcomings is that they can only live in their dreams, and the real world is a very hostile world in comparison to their dream world. The real world to him is in his thoughts, but whenever he steps out of his real world into human society he feels like a stranger, because he is one.

America is ruled by people who accomplish. “The Cerebral is as much out of place in such an environment as a fish is on dry land. He knows it and he shows it. He doesn’t know what the other kind are driving at and they know so little of what he is driving at that they have invented a special name for him – the ‘nut.’ Doing isn’t his line. He prefers the pleasures of ‘thinking over’ to all the ‘putting over’ in the world. This type usually is a failure because he takes it all out in dreaming without ever doing the things necessary to make his dream come true.” The Cerebral is often called a ‘visionary’ because of his predilections for overlooking the obvious, the tangible and the necessary elements in every day existence.

Head work is the favorite activity of the overly-large-headed Cerebral. He is so far removed from the stomach stage that his stomach is as much a remnant with him as the brain is to the Alimentive. The Cerebral is more interested in food for his brain than food for his body so he can go without meals and not mind it. He tends to forget to eat.

People tend to refer to a person of the Cerebral type as being ‘born ahead of his time.’ His brains are able to see what the world needs but he is so averse to acting upon his views that unless active people take up his idea they seldom ever materialize.

Unlike the Muscular, the Cerebral prefers to sit rather than to move. ”Did you ever look on while a pure Cerebral man tried to move a kitchen stove? Ever ask the dreamer in your house to bring down a trunk from the attic? Will you ever forget the almost human perversity with which that stove and that trunk resisted him; or how amusing it looked to see a grown man outwitted at every turn by an inert mass?” Inanimate objects and Cerebral’s don’t mesh very well.

The Cerebral tends to be short and take short steps. This in turn with his lack of muscle to create a powerful stride causes a rather irregular and sometimes jerky walk. The jerk isn’t apparent when he walks slowly, but when he is hurried it is quite noticeable. Cerebral’s tend to get lost in chairs because they are made for average sized people, which is too large for the Cerebral, so their legs dangle and arms don’t reach where they should.

Cerebrals are extremely sympathetic friends, however they don’t have many friends don’t care for more than a few. His ways of thinking are too abstract to add to the gaiety of social gatherings, since social gatherings are based on the enjoyment of the concrete.

Cerebrals enjoy people like himself, – readers, thinkers, writers, – intellectuals. Because these kinds of people are not easily found is a reason why the Cerebral has such a small number of friends. The people he ignores are the ignorant – those who let others do their thinking for them and are unaware of the great things going on in world movements.

Avoiding the limelight is common among Cerebrals. Modesty and reserve characterize the extreme Cerebral. Even when they invent something or write something extraordinary they try to avoid being lionized. Instead of being in the spotlight they prefer the shadows. Due to this they miss out on many of the good things that less brainy and more aggressive people gain in life. Cerebrals enjoy retirement and are constantly missing out on opportunities because they refuse to “mix” with society.

The friends of a Cerebral mean a lot to him, fame sometimes means something to a Cerebral but money typically means little. A pure Cerebral finds it difficulte to be interested in his finances. He hardly ever counts his change and tends to go away from his room leaving everything to his name on the dresser and then forget to lock the door! He seldom asks for a raise at work and is too busy dreaming dreams to plan what he will do when he is older. Due to the fact that we can only get what we go after, the Cerebral is often poor because in order to make money a person must want money – and the Cerebral could care less about money. Only when he wakes up to the poorhouse staring him in the face does he give working hard for money some serious consideration. Even then he does little about it. Due to this, history shows that few people of the pure Cerebral type ever became rich, even the most brilliant.

Clothes are one of the last things that Cerebrals think about. Alimentives demand comfort in clothes, Thoracics demand style, Musculars demand durability and Osseouses demand sameness; but the pure Cerebral type says “anything will do.” He is what most would call a fashion disaster since known of his articles ever match. Clothing is clothing in the Cerebrals’ eyes.

The term ‘absentminded’ often applies to the Cerebral because he is capable of greater concentration than other types, and also because he is so frequently compelled to do things that he has no interest in and then his mind will naturally wander to the things he cares about. Cerebrals tend to be poor talkers yet excellent writers. Before giving his thoughts to the world he first likes to think out every phase of a thing and put it in just the right words. “Some of the world’s greatest ideas have come to light first in the forgotten manuscripts of people of this type who died without showing their writing to any one. Evidently they did not consider them of sufficient importance or did not care as much about publishing them as about putting them down.”

The terms “the ‘little old man’ or ‘little old woman’ of ten is always a Cerebral child. The Alimentives are the babies of the race and never entirely grow up no matter how many years they live. But the Cerebral is born old. From infancy he shows more maturity than other children.” One reward in childhood that comes from a Cerebral’s studiousness and tractableness is that he is a ‘teacher’s pet’.

Pure Cerebrals often have a deficient sense of time. They are less conscious of the hours that have gone by than any other type. Musculars and Osseouses often have an almost uncanny time-sense, but pure Cerebrals lack it. Unlike the other types that follow various religions, according to their upbringings, a large percentage of unorthodox people tend to be of the Cerebral type.

Extreme Cerebrals often die at an earlier age than other types. The reasoning behind this is clear. “An efficient but controlled assimilative system is the first requisite for long life, and the pure Cerebral does not have an efficient one. Moreover, he is prone to neglect what nutritive mechanism he does have, by irregular eating, by being too poor to afford wholesome foods, and by forgetting to eat at all.”

Cerebrals are most susceptible to all types of nervous diseases. “His nervous system is supersensitive. It breaks down more easily and more completely than that of the more elemental types, just as a high-powered car is more easily wrecked than a truck.” Cerebrals must follow mental work. In any other kind of work they will not be successful. “Children of the mental type should be given a good education, for only failure awaits the mental who is without it. To them physical labor is drudgery, and the touch of material things fills them with shrinking and repugnance. Teaching, library work, research work of all kinds, translating, and proofreading are the lines that this type should follow."

Remember, the chief distinguishing marks of the Cerebral, in the order of their importance, are the HIGH FOREHEAD and a PROPORTIONATELY LARGE HEAD FOR THE BODY. Any person who has these is largely of the Cerebral type no matter what other types may be included in his makeup.

Citations:

Benedict, Elsie Lincoln., and Ralph Paine Benedict. How to Analyze People on Sight through the Science of Human Analysis; the Five Human Types,. East Aurora NY: Printed and Bound by the Roycrofters, 1921. Scribd. 4 Dec. 2009. Web. 28 Jan. 2012. <http://www.scribd.com/doc/41132983/Analyze-People-on-Sight-eBook>

Boyd, Thomas P. "PsiTek - The Mental Highway - FREE." PsiTek - FREE Metaphysical Books. Web. 29 Jan. 2012. <http://www.psitek.net/pages/PsiTek-the-mental-highway-Contents.html>.