Different people value different things, but even in our values temper ament plays a decisive role. Even though we may wish to value something, if it is not in our nature to do so, we cannot. We may will, but we cannot will to will. Different types differ in their preferred mood, in what they put their trust in, what they yearn for, what they seek, what they prize, and what they aspire to. It is perhaps in our values that the patterns of personality are most easily discernible, moreso than in other domains, such as the self-image or the forms of intelligence. To appreciate these differences let us study the following chart:
Value Artisans Guardians Idealists Rationals
Being Trusting Yearning Seeking Prizing Aspiring Excited Impulse Impact Stimulation Generosity Virtuoso Concerned Authority Belonging Security Gratitude Executive Enthusiastic Intuition Romance Identity Recognition Sage Calm Reason Achievement Knowledge Deference Wizard
I think that Artisans typically enjoy being excited, trust their impulses, yearn to have impact on others, often seek stimulation, prize generosity, and aspire to virtuosity. These value preferences are radically different from those of other temperament. Therefore is will serve us well if we study these six kinds of value in the case of Artisans lest we are surprised (and perhaps annoyed) to find them, for instance, less security-minded, less sagacious, or less hungry for achievement than we are.
Being Excited
Artisans like being excited and insist on being excited, especially when things get dull. They are excitable as children and they never seem to get less excitable as they grow up. They enjoy being turned on and can tolerate a lot of excitement for long periods of time. Unlike the other three temper aments, the SPs’ public performances even improve the more excited they get. Not that this excitement is always displayed openly. Artisans at their milling machine or crawling on the World Wide Web, working on their
The Values o f Artisans 55 paintings or taking batting practice, are just as keyed up, high-strung, and show the same restless energy.
This excitability is what enables Artisans to be oblivious to pain or fatigue, depending, of course, on what they’re doing. If they’re caught up in some artistic activity, grasped by the action itself—as by a magnet—then they are too excited to feel pain or fatigue. The rest of us get tired and sore in our efforts, but the Artisans are not making effort in our sense; rather, they are acting in the heat of excitement, and so need not endure anything. SPs climb the mountain for the thrill of it—because it’s there—not to get to the top or the other side. Action is for the high, the rush, not for something else. Some say that Artisans, during their excited actions, are dedicated, but this is neither dedication, commitment, nor devotion. It is, rather, a kind of repetition compulsion, making them continue the action that has caught them in its energy field.
Moreover, Artisans (especially the sociable ones) lend an electricity to the environment and to the people around them. SPs tend to live life at the level of a gourmet feast, and they bring to work and to play a sense that something delicious is about to happen. Wherever they go, the atmosphere takes on a glow, seems brighter, more colorful—charged with an excitement that others often admire and even envy. Auntie Mame defies a disapproving world, urging her friend to take some risks: “Yes! Life is a banquet, and most poor sons-of-bitches are starving to death! Live!” And her friend catches the SP fever, responding, “Yes! Live, live, live!”
Excitability has its price, however, which is that Artisans can easily become bored. Boredom is one of the most painful conditions SPs can experience, and if it continues for long they are likely to do almost anything to end it. A friend of Leonard Bernstein remembers the brilliant young musician in his student days at Harvard as “endlessly energetic and...needing constant variety”:
He was magnetic, outgoing, fun-loving, surrounded himself with many friends and had an abundance of acquaintances, from all walks of life....He became bored if made to have a regimental existence. He had a fascination with unique people and artistic projects, and needed to have many projects going on at once.
Similarly, John F. Kennedy hated boredom above all else, as White House correspondent Nancy Dickerson recalls:
To Jack, the cardinal sin was boredom; it was his biggest enemy, and he didn’t know how to handle it. When he was bored, a hood would come down over his eyes and his nervous system would start churning. You could do anything to him—steal his wallet, insult him, argue with him—but to bore him was unpardonable.
to get himself assigned to the dangerous PT boats during World War II, only to have his boat crushed by a Japanese destroyer.
Artisans, of course, are capable of all the moods. Besides being excited, they can be calm, concerned, or enthused like other types. In old age, particularly, some SPs seem to calm down a bit, but this may be because they have lost some of their steam, or because they have gained some control over their impulses. But even with their best years behind them, Artisans still prefer to be excited—to be hot, turned on, to be a live wire— and the other moods of calm, concern, and enthusiasm tend to be short-lived.
It may seem strange to distinguish between enthusiasm and excitement, especially when dictionaries present them as synonymous. But they are quite different attitudes. To be enthused is to be aroused by something inside—an idea, an image, a goal. To be excited is to be stimulated by something outside—a game, a contest, a challenge, an opportunity. Thus the prevailing mood of the SPs is opposite that of the NFs, with SPs frequently and easily becoming excited, but only slowly and rarely becoming enthused; and with NFs frequently and easily showing enthusiasm, but only slowly and uneasily getting excited.
Trusting Impulses
Artisans are impulsive. They like being that way. To be impulsive, spontaneous, is to be really alive. SPs trust their impulses without reserve, enjoy feeling them well up within; and they love discharging them, like setting off an explosion. They even feel uneasy if they don’t have impulses. At one time or another all the types feel these sudden urges to act, but the others try to control them, looking ahead to what they think of as more valuable goals. SJs, NFs, and NTs discipline their impulses in the name of duty, ethics, or reason, behavior which would only make the SP feel bound and confined. Joe Namath, professional football player (and one-time famous bachelor), was more interested in playing the field than in committing to marriage:
I have no desire to have children, so why get married? Ladies, for the most part, want to get married and have children. Most have been condi
tioned that w ay. I c a n ’t handle it. Inside of me I get a little crazy. I start feeling locked in if I have to be somewhere at a certain time and then I worry if I’m not there, she’ll worry. Man, the biggest burden I ever had was love.
Life for an Artisan means having impulses and acting spontaneously on those impulses. Since an impulse, by definition, is ephemeral, the SP must live in the immediate moment. Action cannot be saved for tomorrow. The young Hemingway suddenly quit his job and volunteered to drive ambulances in World War I, but he became impossibly “bored with sight seeing” in France while waiting for his assignment and wrote his sister, “I
The Values o f Artisans 57 wish they’d hurry up and ship us off to the front.” For SPs, to wait is psychological death, no matter how dangerous the action.
Other types often find it hard to understand why an Artisan wants to live so impulsively; but to an Artisan, a life of action in the moment, which disregards long term goals, is life at its freest and most intense. This is not to say that SPs do not have goals and ties just like the rest of us. They do, of course, only their goals are fewer and more tentatively held. And if the ties become too numerous or too binding, then the SP is likely to become restless and get the urge to take off for elsewhere. Artisans, of all the types, are most likely to answer the call to wander, and they can sever social or family ties more easily than others, even though they may be aware of the distress such behavior causes those close to them. The SP can abruptly abandon either an activity or a relationship, walking away without a backward glance. At mid-life particularly, the Artisans’ need for freedom from constraints may be so intense that they can become unusually impatient. A stifling career is suddenly discarded; family responsibilities are dropped, sadly, even painfully, but still with little regret. Although the SP himself created these ties, now they seem a suffocating burden. Gauguin, in his early forties, turned away from his wife and children and sailed off to Tahiti, where he produced many paintings, some held to be masterpieces, though he left broken trust behind.
Artisans must do whatever their impulse dictates and continue the action as long as the urge compels. When the impulse lets up, when they no longer feel like racing, painting, playing, or whatever, then they can stop. Under stress, SPs will sometimes claim that they have to behave in a particular way, that they can’t help themselves. Thus they may admit to being “compulsive gamblers,” for example, or “compulsive drinkers,” and are likely to be labeled as such by therapists who encounter them. But while compulsions are experienced by the other types as burdensome and onerous (NTs can be compulsive, too), the SPs’ compulsions are almost all exciting and not at all burdensome.
Yearning for Impact
Social impact is vital for Artisans, even for those who appear to shrug their shoulders and turn away from society. Artisans need to be potent, to be felt as a strong presence, and they want to affect the course of events, if only by defying, shocking, or mocking the establishment. For an Artisan, to be without impact, to make no difference in human affairs, is like being deprived of oxygen. More than other types, the SP is subject to what Karl Biihler, one of the great Gestalt psychologists, called “function lust,” that is, a craving for impressive action, a longing to perform some conspicuous function in their social context and so make their mark. SPs hunger to have a piece of the action, to make a splash, to make something happen, to hit the big time, whether in the world of art or corporate business, on the battlefield or ball field, on stage or in the political arena. This is why so
many professional politicians are SPs: the world of politics allows not only for maneuvering, excitement, and risk—but for powerful social impact. In his Presidency, and in his life, Teddy Roosevelt lived by a motto that speaks for all his fellow-Artisans: “Get action; do things...create, act, take a place wherever you are; get action.”
Seeking Stimulation
Artisans spend a good deal of their time seeking stimulation because they need it. As much as possible, they live in their five senses, and they seem to like their music a little louder than the other types, their clothes a little more colorful, and their food and drink a little stronger. Marvin Zuckerman, an American psychologist, spoke of this type as the “Sensation- Seeking Personality,” a name that British playwright Alan Ayckbourn seems almost to have had in mind when one of his comic heroes, Norman Dewers, rather drunkenly begs his brother-in-law to join him on a holiday:
no, not a holiday—that sounds so damn conventional. I want us just to go....And see things. And taste things. And smell things. And touch things...touch trees—and grass—and—earth....Let’s be able to say—we have seen and experienced everything.
Artisans believe that variety is the spice of life, and they want their lives to be filled with new sensations and experiences. In family life, Artisans are eager to try different vacation spots, to buy new cars, new clothes, to change houses, to try out new foods, new places to eat, or even to vary the dinner hour, wanting to eat whenever the impulse strikes. This tends to be upsetting to the more conservative types, SJs particularly, and can lead to difficulty when an SP marries.
The same at work: if their job has little variety or unpredictability, in other words, little that is stimulating about it, the Artisan becomes disinter ested. But as the range of possibilities and emergencies increases, so does the SP’s eagerness to take on the task. In fact, when a job becomes too dull and routine, SPs have been known to create a sensation—just to liven things up a little. Not that Artisans refuse to do what they’re supposed to do, or in the prescribed way, or even to do it over and over again. They may or may not, depending on how they feel at the moment. But they will turn the job into play if they can, and if they must repeat an action, they will either make it variations on a theme, or they will tune out and reduce it to an automatic way of operating, their modus operandi, or M.O., a habit pattern which Artisans often resort to.
Prizing Generosity
Child-like in other ways, perhaps Artisans are most child-like in the life-long pleasure they get out of giving. They never really lose the sense of fun that accompanies fortuitous generosity—not giving because some
The Values of Artisans 59 thing is owed to them or by them, but giving that is done spontaneously, for no reason other than having fun. For SPs giving out of duty isn’t fun at all, but impulsive giving is very gratifying. For example, Artisan men are the most likely of all the types to bring flowers, candy, and whatnot to their girl friend or spouse, while Artisan women are the most likely to throw a party for spouse or child or parent just for the fun of it, and are just as delighted when this is done for them. Of course other types, especially Guardians, are pleased to give gifts, but not to the same extent or frequency of pleasure experienced by Artisans. Santa Claus, the elfin spirit of the Guardians, is known to give only to the deserving, but Dionysus, the spiritual guide of the Artisans, is pleased to give of his bounty to all who come to the party, whatever their just deserts may or may not be.
This impulsive generosity can be expensive at times, as seen in a story about one of Elvis Presley’s whims. Presley had parked his custom-made Cadillac near a car lot, and when he returned he found a total stranger with her head in his car, looking it over longingly. Elvis asked the woman if she liked it, and then offered, “This one is mine, but I’ll buy you one.” He caught the stranger by the arm, took her to the nearby car lot, and told her to pick one out. After she had selected a gold and white model, Presley learned that it was the woman’s birthday, so he handed her the keys to the car, wished her happy birthday, and told his aide to write her a check so that the woman could “buy some clothes to go with the car.” And Frank Sinatra, according to John Lahr’s New Yorker profile, “has always been known among his friends for impulsive, awesome acts of generosity—those grand gestures that Sicilians call la bella fig u ra ” For instance, one time when his friend actor George Raft was under indictment by the IRS, Sinatra sent him a blank check with a note saying, “To use if you need it.”
Aspiring to be a Virtuoso
Aspiration is more of a dream than an ambition, something one would be if only one could, something seen as almost out of one’s reach, such that those who make it to that level of expertise wonder how they got there. In the case of Artisans, they so covet skill in technique that they tend to aspire secretly to becoming some sort of virtuoso of performance, the aspiration becoming less secret as the technical mastery increases. Scratch an SP, find a would-be virtuoso, who, short of virtuosity, can attain surprising proficiency in some art form.
Now, it’s one thing to dream of being a virtuoso—an ace in one’s field—and quite another actually to become one. After all, a virtuoso is the ultimate technician, capable at times of perfect artistic execution, showing skill so great as to be unimaginable. Take figure skating. How Olympic skaters perform those incredible turns and leaps so flawlessly is beyond imagination, even though it is clear that such skill requires daily practice for years on end. Most of us, were we somehow to practice that much, still would not develop such extreme prowess. No, it is something in the Artisans’
temperament that puts virtuosity barely within their reach but not the reach of others. After all, those of other type aspire to other things—wizardry, wisdom, executive status—and so cannot aspire at the same time to virtuosity.
Virtuoso performers in the fine arts, or on stage and screen, are apt to be Artisans, but we must not forget that virtuosity in performance can be achieved, or at least sought, by any of the SPs: not only the figure-skater, but the surfer, the chef, the sculptor, the surgeon, the racer, the mountain- climber, the gambler, the politician, the fighter-pilot, even the con artist and the gunslinger of the Old West. Indeed, the gunslinger could draw his long-barreled revolver, cock it, aim it, and fire it, hitting unbelievably small moving targets, without sighting down the barrel. He was able to perform this feat in less than one-fifth of a second—so swiftly that the motion of his hand could not be seen. The fast draw of the gunslinger is