28. Temperaments in the Light of Spiritual Science

GA 68d/1909-01-09/p033 ·1909-01-09 · English High

Record: mixed sources. This volume draws on more than one kind of record (transcripts, notes, documents). Check the volume's own front matter before weighing a single passage. Evidence: «Vorträge aus den Jahren 1905 bis 1909 in Form von ausführlichen Mitschriften, Zuhörernotizen und Zeitungsreferaten» (Lectures from the years 1905 to 1909 in the form of detailed transcripts, listeners' notes and newspaper reports). The publisher's description of the volume, as mirrored on AnthroWiki (GA 68d). The translation is the maintainer's, not a published one.

It is also very difficult to treat the melancholic child. What can we do? And what if we feel horror at the threatening one-sidedness of the melancholic temperament of the child, since we cannot graft in what the child does not have? We have to expect that it has the strength to cling to inhibitions and to resist. If we want to steer this peculiarity of its temperament in the right direction, we have to divert this strength from the inner to the outer. It is particularly important for the educator of a melancholic child to place emphasis on how one deals with the child, to show him that there is suffering in the world. The melancholic child is capable of feeling pain; if you want to amuse him, then drive him back into his own narrowness. Distract the child by showing him that there is suffering! The melancholic is happiest when he can grow up at the side of someone who, through difficult experiences, has a lot to say, because soul works with soul in the happiest way. In general, it is good not to try to heal the young melancholic by bringing entertaining company into his environment, but to let him experience justified pain.

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Cite: GA 68d/1909-01-09/p033 · edition English