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‘We might approach this task by noting that a person's view of time is a way of discerning his personality. We may almost say: Tell me what you think of time and I shall know what to think of you.’
The Nature of time, the factors governing time perception, and the impact upon man of time awareness has long been a concern of philosophers and ecclesiastics. Philosophers have been concerned with whether time is real or illusory. Those interested in cross-cultural studies (comparative religion, anthropology) have striven to prove that there are different ways of looking at time and that all of these should be respected. Physicists have been concerned with the nature of time's flow, and have cast into question any number of the commonly accepted views of time: such issues as linearity, non-simultaneity, and the exclusive movement of time from past to future have been debated.
More recently, psychologists and psychiatrists have entered the discussions about time. Some investigators have examined the relationship between perception of time and motivation towards achievement (Knapp and Garbutt, 1958), while others have drawn parallels between the distortion of time and the nature of mental illness, specifically schizophrenia (Aaronson, 1966 and ?1967).
The purpose of the present paper is to explore the dimension of time in relation to a psychological classification system which describes temperamental differences among normal individuals. The system to be discussed was first put forth by Jung in his book Psychological types (1921). Jung's system is by no means the only typology of normal behaviour. It has been frequently observed that, in spite of differences in education, culture, and historical epoch, human beings appear to fall into discrete temperamental categories.1