Chapter 8 Interesting Women

Chapter 8

Interesting Women

Queen Elizabeth II; Margaret Thatcher; Anne Frank; Joséphine Baker; Frida Kahlo; Diana Princess of Wales

Queen Elizabeth II (Born 1926)

     Elizabeth Alexandra Mary (Queen Elizabeth II) of the house of Windsor was born in 1926, and she is the head of state of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Queen Elizabeth II is a Choleric, but she is a different kind of Choleric than is the norm, for the simple reason that she has been trained from birth to subdue and control her emotions.

     Those people who know her best describe her as orderly, responsible, sensible, well-behaved, wise and adaptable. In other words the Queen is a woman who has never been allowed to be anything other than a self-controlled Choleric, although her basic temperament always shines through the invisible barrier that exists between a royal person on show to the entire world, and the common people.

Queen Elizabeth II lives a protected existence very similar to the way that Pope John Paul II lived, although those who were charged with protecting both the Pope and the Queen were unable to stop assassination attempts on both of them. The Queen is taken care of by many servants whose duties are to obey her commands implicitly. She is protected around the clock and she lives in splendid grandeur where her every need is taken care of.

Queen Elizabeth II has the kind of life that every ruling despot desires to have, but she is only able to live in relative peace and comfort because her power comes from her popularity and not from a God-given right to rule. If Queen Elizabeth II had the power to govern, her natural choleric emotions would rise up to the surface and her emotions would express themselves as hot tempered, impatient, brash and domineering.  

     Like most Cholerics the Queen is utilitarian and not given to excess except when it becomes necessary for state purposes. She is a hard working woman and gets satisfaction from the fact that her official duties keep her busy. Her self worth comes from getting a job well done and her self worth does not come from her iconic image as a jewel bedecked Queen.

This satisfaction that comes from a job well done is what drives most choleric people. Just like the Queen, they can’t stand to be idle, they prefer to be busy. Cholerics are very hands-on types of people and they are able to adapt to most situations, but just like the Queen, most choleric women tend to become old-fashioned as they grow older. They get stuck in a comfortable rut, and although they can adapt to change they really wish that things would stay just as they are. But unlike most Choleric women, Queen Elizabeth knows when to keep her mouth shut.

The Queen has two jobs; her first job was to produce an heir for the British throne, which she did in the form of her melancholic son, Prince Charles. Her second job was to be an ambassador of respectability for the British government, and she carries out these duties admirably, always with the support of her melancholic consort, Prince Philip the Duke of Edinburgh.

     Fortunately for the little Princess, Elizabeth grew up in a loving home. Her choleric father King George VI, adored his oldest daughter and he was very proud of her verve and her strong character. The princess’s phlegmatic mother (the Queen Mother) was an extremely laid back woman who had been cosseted her entire life and who doted on her two daughters. But whereas Elizabeth, being the eldest was raised as the heir presumptive to the throne of England, her younger choleric sister was not. Reports are that Margaret the younger sister was just plain spoiled.

     The difference between the two choleric sisters shows the opposing factors that can cause one sister to exhibit all the positives that are possible in this type of temperament, and the other sister to exhibit many of the negatives of this type of temperament.

     Both of these royal daughters were raised by the same parents, they grew up in the same wealthy family, they had the same kind of education, the same nanny and they more or less had the same everything. But the parents treated one with respect and they treated the other as a petted child. Elizabeth was old enough to participate in the war effort (World War II) and this gave her a sense of worth, but Margaret was too young.

Elizabeth was allowed to marry the man that she loved, but Margaret was given a choice between marrying the man she loved and losing every privilege of being a royal princess. Margaret made the wrong choice. She chose to keep her life as a royal princess and this poor choice affected the quality of her ensuing life.

Most people spend their entire lives searching for love, and if a person is lucky enough to find a loving partner, it is a serious mistake to give him or her up for the sake of fame and fortune. The facts are that even if a person is fortunate enough to have been born into fame and fortune, the search for true love and companionship never stops.

Elizabeth became Queen of England and she acquired royal palaces, ancient castles, art collections and fabulous jewels just by virtue of having been born first, and Margaret more or less faded into the background, dependent on an allowance given to her by her sister. This was a recipe for disaster and Margaret left a disastrous legacy of hopelessness behind her when she died. She had the reputation typical of a thwarted Choleric and in the end Margaret turned into a bad-tempered bully.

     One time, Queen Elizabeth II expressed the fact that she liked animals a lot better than she liked people. That is exactly how many of her Choleric counterparts feel. They don’t really like people very much but they don’t like to be alone either unless they are working on something that interests them. Queen Elizabeth II has been quoted as saying, “It’s all to do with the training: you can do a lot if you’re trained,” and she was absolutely correct.

In the case of Queen Elizabeth II, the circumstances that surrounded her birth dictated all. Just like American President, Franklin D. Roosevelt, she had the best that life could offer and as a result the Queen grew into the best kind of Choleric that life can produce.

Franklin D. Roosevelt grew into the best kind of Sanguine that life can produce, Pope John Paul II grew into the best kind of Phlegmatic that life can produce and the common denominators are always the same; kind and loving parents and a respectable path through life that is laid out with the potential for achieving great success and great self worth. They were also surrounded with experienced, educated mentors who only had their best interests at heart.

These iconic people were never abused, their parents encouraged them to become the best person that they could be and they lived in a time period where it was possible to climb above the ravages of war and succeed in a new, advanced way of thinking, i.e. freedom, democracy and justice.

Life is definitely not fair but most people would rather be alive than dead. It is fear of the unknown that keeps us struggling for survival. Many people are foolish enough to brag that they do not fear death. This is a truism. There is nothing to fear about dying because nature knows full well how to die; it only takes a moment of your time. But it is the journey towards death that is to be feared because that journey may encompass tremendous pain and suffering. Very few of us actually die peacefully in our sleep. 

Margaret Thatcher (1925-2013)

Margaret Hilda Thatcher was the first female Prime Minister of Britain and she held on to that position for eleven and a half years. People who worked alongside her described her as defiant, undaunted by criticism, blessed with a logical mind, assertive and forceful. On the other hand people who worked for her behind the scenes in the Prime Minister’s private residence at 10 Downing Street, described her as kind, caring and thoughtful. In actual fact she was both. Just like Saddam Hussein she had a dual personality that was the result of having a melancholic temperament.

Prime Minister Thatcher was a very determined woman and people either hated her or they loved her. She could make visiting heads of state bristle with her arrogance and her adamant stance on political matters but her voice grew very soft and tender when she visited British soldiers who had been wounded during the Falklands War against Argentina.

In 1982, Margaret Thatcher became a temporary hero when Britain, thanks to her determination, won the ten week, Falkland War. Previous to the war, she had been dubbed the most hated woman in the country because she was instrumental in banishing the free milk service to all schoolchildren over the age of seven, a service that had been enacted in 1946 at the end of World War II. Margaret Thatcher was called the woman who stole the milk out of the mouths of the poor little children of Britain.

Margaret Thatcher was very much like her counterpart during World War II, Winston Churchill. Both were Melancholics, both held the position of Prime Minister and both of them had very strong egos. Like Churchill, Thatcher pushed on, trampling underfoot those who opposed her, because she had an unwavering belief in her own correctness. Her view was that the good of the country overruled the good of the individual and she was instrumental in crushing trade unions, pulling Britain back from socialism and pushing for a more capitalist society. She was a member of the Conservative (Republican) party and her stance was against the Labor (Democratic) party, a political party that she firmly believed had driven the country into near ruin.

It was said that the Thatcher policies legitimized selfishness but it wasn’t really selfishness, it was self centeredness. Under her rule it wasn’t ‘one for all and all for one,’ it was more like ‘God helps those who help themselves.’

Margaret Thatcher’s emotions swung to and fro. She had a rough edge to her but she melted like putty when she was in the company of American President Ronald Reagan. Ronald Reagan had a sanguine temperament and his easy going, friendly joviality appealed greatly to Margaret Thatcher in comparison to the stuffy, prigs of her own cabinet members. But members of the American Press called her haughty, arrogant and condescending.

Both Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher were instrumental in contributing to the fall of communism but they did have one other ally, Mikhail Gorbachev. This was a match made in heaven; a sanguine American President, a melancholic British prime Minister and a phlegmatic Soviet Union Leader. Mikhail Gorbachev knew that the Soviets didn’t stand a chance against the combined efforts of an American and British Alliance, and Gorbachev was at heart a peacemaker and a humanitarian. Under him the Soviet Union collapsed.

Margaret Thatcher came from a very stable family. Her middle class parents owned a grocery store but her father loved politics and he encouraged his daughter to take an active interest. Both parents were staunch Methodists and reports are that the parents were very loving towards their daughter. They gave their daughter an extensive education and later on she met and married a very successful man who acted as her consort. Denis Thatcher was a successful, laid back Phlegmatic who was happy to finance his wife’s ambition to study law and who also afforded her the chance to be a politician. The Thatcher’s employed a full time nanny to take care of their two children.

Just like the Queen, Margaret Thatcher had an idealistic childhood, and just like the Queen she had loving parents and a supportive husband. But unlike the Queen, Margaret Thatcher wanted and sought after power. But the power was limited in its scope and except for that political limitation on her power, Margaret Thatcher might have gone on to become a dictator.

Her reputation will go down in history as the Iron Lady who ruled with a closed fist but in the end it was her own cabinet ministers who forced her to resign. Margret Thatcher forgot that she was supposed to represent the people because she imagined herself to be a Queen in her own domain.

Margaret Thatcher is quoted as saying, “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money.” Like Winston Churchill, Margaret Thatcher showed a rare witticism. She once said, “If you want something said, ask a man; if you want something done, ask a woman,” and “I’m extraordinarily patient provided I get my own way in the end.”

There is a thin veneer of civilization that stands between an autocratic leader and an autocratic despot and the key to prevention always lies in the modern Democratic system of having a limited term in office. As with all people, Margaret Thatcher got crankier as she got older and if she had had total power she would have turned into ‘the Queen of Hearts,’ a character in Lewis Carroll’s childhood story, ‘Alice’s Adventure in Wonderland.’ The Queen’s famous line is, “Off with their heads.”

  

Annelies Marie Frank (1929-1945)

In June of 1999, Time Magazine published a special edition named ‘Time 100: The Most Important People of the Twentieth Century,’ and Annelies Marie Frank (Anne Frank) was listed as one of its ‘Heroes and Icons.’

It seems that everyone in the world has heard of Anne Frank and this young girl, who died at the age of fifteen, in one of Germany’s Nazi concentration camps, has become symbolic of the horrors of the Holocaust wherein millions of people were murdered just because they were Jewish

Anne was born in Frankfort Germany, but when Anne was only four years old, her family escaped to Amsterdam in The Netherlands when it became obvious that it was dangerous for Jews to remain in Germany. At the age of thirteen, Anne’s family, together with another Jewish family, went into hiding in an Annex that was part of an office building where Anne’s father had worked. Thanks to some non Jewish friends they managed to hide out for two years before being betrayed and Anne, her sister Margot and her mother died from a combination of disease and/or starvation. Only Otto Frank, Anne’s father survived.

One of the people who helped to hide the families was an Austrian born, Dutch citizen named Miep Gies, and it was Miep who found Anne’s diary and turned it over to Otto Frank when he returned to Amsterdam to look for his family. The diary was eventually published and it was translated into many languages and read by millions, including schoolchildren, the world over. Next to the Bible, ‘The Diary of Anne Frank’ is the most widely read book in the world. It has been made into a film, it has been acted out on the stage and it still remains as subject matter for intellectual discussions around the globe.

Anne’s expressed desire to become famous and live forever has surely come true, but Anne suffered through much horror, deprivation and brutality in order for her dream to come true. One of the surviving witnesses to Anne’s suffering, a woman who was also sent to the concentration camp at Bergen-Belsen, described what she saw. They were assigned to hard labor.

At the end of her life, Anne was emaciated and covered in scabies, an infectious skin disease caused by mites that burrow under the skin. It is unknown whether she died of starvation or disease but it is known that she died only a few weeks before the camp was liberated. Anne was buried in a mass grave along with the other deceased victims that were found in the camp.   

Anne’s diary reveals her true nature and it is easy to determine that Anne was a Choleric like her father. Anne’s sister Margot was a Melancholic like her mother. The writings in the diary were profound and because she was a prisoner in the annex for two years, Anne ‘gift of the gab’ forced her into writing down her philosophy of life, her observations about people and her undying belief in the goodness of mankind. It was an optimistic view on life which is not surprising because Anne Frank was an optimist.

Much later in life one of Anne’s surviving cousins, a man named Buddy Elias who had relocated to Switzerland when he was a child, described the cousin he knew before Jews started to be earmarked for death. In a televised interview Buddy Elias described Anne as wildfire, lively and positive. Anne liked to be outside, she loved to play and her cousin likened her to a little explosion.

Otto Frank was also interviewed and he described his youngest daughter as a cheerful, lovable character and Anne herself wrote an analysis of her own character in her diary. She wrote, “I have a happy disposition, I am not suspicious, I like people and I want them all to be happy with me.” A friend from her childhood said this about her. “I’ve said this before that I never met anyone who enjoyed life as much as Anne did.”

These could be descriptions of a person with a sanguine temperament but after viewing Otto Frank being interviewed, and reading Anne’s own description of her mother, It can be determined that Anne was not a Sanguine. Anne wrote, “I need my mother to set a good example and be a person I can respect.” She also wrote about her own inability to “confront her (her mother) with her carelessness, her sarcasm and her hardheartedness.”  The conclusion to be reached by a process of elimination is that Anne’s temperament was like that of her choleric father.

It can be difficult to determine the temperament of a child from a handful of photos and a hand written diary, but it seems that Anne’s natural exuberance and her need to express herself in words, by virtue of the circumstances, had to be relegated to paper. Constant chatter in the hidden annex was forbidden for fear of discovery.

It isn’t until adulthood that many Cholerics start to feel distaste for other adults and Anne the teenager was just in the throes of discovering herself. She was trying to determine her place in the world. From the writings in her diary it can be seen that Anne was overly sensitive to criticism and was not afraid to tell people what she thought. She was boisterous and opinionated and it must have been a trial for such an extroverted child to be locked up in a dark dingy place in such close contact with a handful of people whom she was uncomfortable with.

But Anne loved her father and her father loved her. Otto Frank was astounded by what he read in Anne’s diary because he believed that he had known this child of his very well. He experienced and encouraged her strong independent spirit but he never knew the depths of her soul. Like most parents, Otto never really knew his child because few children are given leave by their parents to express their deepest inner emotions.

A child is just a young adult and should be treated as a future adult who will inherit the world from his or her forefathers, and as Anne expressed it, it is a world where both good and evil exist and where good must eventually triumph over evil. It is a mistake to try to protect children from knowing about evil just as it is a mistake to deliberately expose children to evil. A child needs to be taught moral values but not just by words alone. The brain of a child soaks up details and it soaks up not only the words of their parents but also the actions of their parents.

The Diary of Anne Frank is an exposé of her thoughts about life and this exposé happened during a two year period, in a prison like setting. Anne relied on her memory of what life was like outside of her miserable abode and she also studied the people who existed alongside her in that miserable abode. If she had been freely living her life, it is doubtful that the diary would have contained such a profound analysis of human life, and it is an example of the oft repeated saying; God works in mysterious ways.

Anne often wondered about God. She wondered why he created the Jews to be different from everyone else and why he allowed such evil things to happen to them. But Anne was raised in Judaism with a God who believed in, “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.”  The actual verse from Deuteronomy 19:21 reads; “And thine eye shall not pity; but life shall go for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot.”

The Jews are the only people who use the Old Testament (Torah) as the only basis for a belief in the existence of God. It is a fearful, legalistic book and it contains the history of the Israelites (Jews) in full. In the book of Deuteronomy the God of Abraham most certainly gave instructions to retaliate against those who have harmed you, so why did the Jews of Europe barely retaliate against the German protagonists? The Nazi hunters of the twentieth century were few in number.

The Holocaust was most certainly how the so called Christian Germans retaliated against the Jews, and retaliation was forbidden by Jesus Christ who told his followers to “Turn the other cheek”. The actual verse from Matthew 5:39 is, “But I say unto you, that ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.”

It seems that the Jews were acting more like Christians and the Germans were actually disregarding the teachings of their own religion and following the commands of the Torah. The Germans believed that the Jews were to blame for everything that was wrong with Germany. It is a good argument for the disbandment of all religions. Religion has become obsolete and it is, and always has been a scourge upon the earth. But true spiritual beliefs are not to be mistaken as religions. True spiritual beliefs form as the result of an inner search for truth and a reaching out to the cosmos for guidance.

In one of his speeches, Nelson Mandela, the South African revolutionary who was incarcerated for twenty years, likened Anne Frank’s struggle against Nazism to his struggle against Apartheid. Among other awards Mandela received a humanitarian award from the Anne Frank Foundation for his part in fighting to abolish the practice of segregating blacks from whites in the country of his birth.

Excerpts from “The Diary of Anne Frank”:

·         How wonderful it is that nobody needs to wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.

·         In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart.

·         Think of all the beauty still left around you and be happy.

·         Whoever is happy will make others happy.

·         In the long run the sharpest weapon of all is a kind and gentle spirit.

·         Anyhow, I’ve learned one thing now. You only really get to know people when you’ve had a jolly good row with them. Then and only then can you judge their true characters.

·         The final forming of a person’s character lies in their own hands.

    

Freda Joséphine Baker (1906-1975)

During her lifetime, Freda Joséphine Baker (Joséphine Baker), the most famous black woman in the entire world, helped to wipe out segregation in the United States, although today very few people in the United States have ever heard of her.

In 1906, at the age of fifteen, Joséphine Baker who was born in St. Louis, Missouri, started out in life as a street corner dancer. Joséphine was spotted dancing on her street corner and was immediately snapped up by a travelling vaudeville show, a show that afforded her a chance in a lifetime to travel up north to New York. It was while she was in New York that Joséphine Baker got her big chance in life.

Joséphine joined the chorus line of a Broadway show where once again someone spotted her unique style of dancing and offered her the chance to travel to France and perform in the Théâtre des Champs Élysées. It was an exciting time for Joséphine because for the first time in life she felt like a real human being. She could walk in and out of hotels, dine in fine, French restaurants and hold her head up high, because there was no segregation in France and she had been lucky enough to arrive there when everything African was in vogue.

The world became Joséphine’s oyster. She was recruited by the Folies Bergѐre and was on her way to becoming a world famous entertainer. As both a singer and an erotic dancer, Joséphine Baker was the first African-American woman to star in a major motion picture and because she was a Sanguine, she kept smiling all the way through it.

Joséphine was not welcome in the United States. Her brand of eroticism was foreign to American audiences and she was ridiculed by the press. She hated segregation and because of it and because of the ill treatment that she had received, Joséphine decided to become a French citizen. The country of her birth viewed her as an inferior specimen of humanity and this strangely attractive, black woman refused to accept her designation as being inferior to white people.

Joséphine’s wild, erotic and enthusiastic dancing style, her huge smile and her high spirits show off her sanguine temperament to the full. She loved to be the center of attention, she was overtly friendly and she was generous to a fault.

Because of her generosity, her wild extravagance and her poor business acumen Joséphine died penniless in 1975. She died as the result of a cerebral hemorrhage. Joséphine was only sixty eight but she died in a splash of glory after a performance of a lifetime in a stunning stage show in Paris. One of Joséphine’s friends remarked that Joséphine did not die from a cerebral hemorrhage, she died from joy.

Happy, gregarious sanguine people have the most capacity for joy and when they are happy they laugh spontaneously all the way through a conversation but they are notorious for being rather shallow when it comes to dealing with people. A Sanguine can have hundreds of friends but although her friends, husbands and lovers didn’t forget Joséphine easily, Joséphine had an amazing capacity to forget them and move on to the next new friend or lover.

But she didn’t forget about one of her missions in life which was to push for the end to segregation in her homeland. Not only did she burst open the taboos on female sexuality but she also burst through the race barrier. In her day she was the highest paid, most photographed woman in the world and in 1973 she returned in triumph to perform at Carnegie Hall where finally she was accepted for who she was and what she represented; she represented freedom.

Joséphine Baker was an extrovert. She pushed forward as an activist by refusing to perform at segregated nightclubs and she was so vocal in her views that the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) gave her a lifetime membership and proclaimed May 20, 1951 to be Joséphine Baker day.

But Joséphine is also remembered for being a member of the French Resistance, during World War II. She relocated to North Africa for a while and it was there that she performed for both American and British troops. Again she refused to perform to a segregated audience and her wishes were accommodated.

After the war, French President Charles de Gaulle made Joséphine Baker a Chevalier of the Legion d’honneur, the highest honor that can be bestowed on a French citizen, and he also awarded her two medals, the ‘Croix de Guerre’ and the ‘Rosette de la Résistance.’ Joséphine is also renowned for her famous Rainbow tribe. The Rainbow tribe consisted of twelve children, eleven boys and one girl whom she had adopted from around the world. With these adoptions Joséphine was trying to prove the point that the color of a person’s skin does not matter. She raised her children and put them on show as an example of how people could live without prejudice.

Joséphine Baker was born poor and she was born illegitimate. Her unmarried parents used to take the toddler Joséphine on stage with them when they performed their own song and dance routine, but at the age of eight Joséphine was farmed out to work as a Domestic for white families in St Louis, Missouri. At the age of thirteen Joséphine dropped out of school, ran off and started to live on the streets. What drove her on was the fact that she had nothing to lose, she loved to dance and that was how she survived until her big chance came.

There is no account of her parents abusing her and all the deprivations in her childhood came from just being poor. The people who abused Joséphine were white Americans but she grew up with some kind of stamina, a penchant for having fun and a sense of freedom from society’s restraints. She must have learned how to be like that from observing her parents, one of whom was a Sanguine like herself.

Joséphine Baker has been quoted as saying, “Surely the day will come when color means nothing more than the skin tone, when religion is seen uniquely as a way to speak one’s soul, when birth places have the weight of a throw of the dice and all men are born free, when understanding breeds love and brotherhood.”    

Frida Kahlo (1907-1954)

Magdalena Carmen Frieda Kahlo y Calderón (Frida Kahlo) was a Mexican artist who depicted her own face on canvas. She used her own face as a symbol of self exploration into her own experiences of sadness and sorrow. She was a melancholic lady throughout her entire adulthood and her melancholia is reflected in the numerous self portraits that she threw out to the world.

Frida Kahlo expressed her opinion that her paintings should focus on the thing that she knew best, and the thing that she knew best was her own self. She continuously studied the mirrored reflection of her own face, and it was a face that never smiled and never expressed any emotion; but it is fascinating to look at none-the-less. It is fascinating because her face was a stunning portrayal of life as she endured it.

Frida was a tragic figure in the melodrama of life. At the age of six she suffered a bout of polio and the polio virus left her with one emaciated leg and an obvious limp. But she did recover from polio and because she was extremely intelligent, she began to forge ahead in order to realize her dream of becoming a doctor. Frida Kahlo would never become a doctor; it was her destiny to become an artist of renown, but like many famous artists, her paintings only began to sell for millions, long after her death.

 In 1925 when Frida was only eighteen years old, she was involved in a serious and damaging accident when the bus she was travelling in collided with a street, trolley car. It seemed as if every bone in her body had been broken; her spine was damaged and both her abdomen and her uterus had been punctured by a metal spike. Doctors were convinced that Frida Kahlo’s days were numbered, but she surprised everyone by surviving although she lived with severe pain as her constant companion, until the day she died at the age of forty seven.

The accident left Frida bed-ridden for a long period of time but during that time she began to paint pictures. Frida had a way of incorporating her own physical pain into her multi-colored artwork but like many great melancholic artists, she also incorporated her deep, emotional pain into her work. She was a troubled woman given over to deep soul searching and self introspection.  

Like many Melancholics, Frida Kahlo was obsessed with her own face and like many Melancholics she had become obsessed with her own ailments; she liked to carry her suffering on her sleeve so that the whole world would take notice. This was her existence while she was bedridden and it continued to dictate her existence after she partially recovered and was able to walk again. However Frida managed to create a life for herself and she also managed to fall in love with the famous Mexican painter Diego Rivera.

The strange relationship between Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo is legendary. He was an established mural artist who depicted Mexican ideals, Mexican culture and Mexican history. He was a man of the people, a workaholic and a man who had a voracious sexual appetite.

Frida worshiped Diego Rivera as if he was a God. She idealized him and put him on a pedestal because in her mind he was a superior human being. They were both atheists and they were both communists but although at first they did support Leon Trotsky, the famous, Russian Marxist revolutionary, and they openly praised the actions of the Bolsheviks, a political party that was founded by Vladimir Lenin.  The Bolsheviks eventually became the communist party of the Soviet Union and in the end they were quite vocal in their support for Josef Stalin who banished Trotsky and opposed Lenin’s policies. Frida and Diego likened the overthrow of the Russian Tsar to the overthrow of President Porfirio Díaz’s government during the Mexican revolution of 1910.

Diego Rivera was known for vocalizing his belief that God did not exist and that religions are a form of collective neurosis, and Diego’s outlook on life fell in line with Frida’s own way of thinking. Frida and Diego married, divorced and remarried, and Frida’s own mother likened the two of them to an elephant marrying a dove. Nobody except a mother would ever describe Frida Kahlo as a dove, but everyone who met him could certainly liken Diego to an elephant because Diego Rivera was obese.

They had a tumultuous choleric/melancholic relationship that was often peppered with extra marital affairs and it was reported that during a visit to France, bisexual Frida once had an affair with the openly bisexual Joséphine Baker. It was during one of her visits to France that Frida gave a small exhibition of her work. This exhibition resulted in the purchase of one of Frida’s paintings for the Paris Louvre which is one of the largest museums in the world.

The married couple also spent some years in San Francisco and it is reported that Frida became unhappy while she was there and forced Diego to return with her to Mexico. After returning to Mexico it was choleric Diego who became unhappy and he blamed Frida for his unhappiness. This bull of a man took lovers, scorned his wife and in his ordinariness made her life miserable. Frida, forever the dramatist stated that she had been damaged twice; she had been damaged physically by the bus accident and she had been damaged psychologically by her husband.  

But the damage to her psyche started long before she met Diego Rivera; it started during her childhood growing up in a dysfunctional family. Frida was a scornful person and except when it came to Diego Rivera, she was completely self-consumed. She described herself as being lazy and stupid but she was actually just addicted to painkillers. Atheistic Frida Kahlo was figuratively speaking, a very religious person because not only did she worship her husband, she also worshipped herself. Her self portraits resemble religious icons and like many other atheists she actually worshiped the idea of humanity as a whole instead of as separate individuals.

In spite of her self abasement, Kahlo also put herself on a pedestal as being more in tune with suffering than anyone else on earth. She was a self made martyr but in spite of all these things, her life of pain was the stimulus that produced a collection of stunning and unique works of art that are very much admired today.

Frida Kahlo was born in a small town on the outskirts of Mexico City. Her father was a German photographer with possibly Hungarian ethnicity and it was believed that he may have been Jewish. Frida’s mother was a devout Roman Catholic of mixed American Indian and Spanish ancestry. Karl Wilhelm Kahlo, Frida’s father, was vocal in his condemnation of all humans. When asked the question why he never photographed people and concentrated his work only on photographing buildings and structures, he is reported as saying that he did not wish to improve on what God had made ugly.

It is entirely possible that her father’s strong dislike for the human race rubbed off on Frida, resulting in the fact that she grew up disliking her own appearance. She once stated, “I was born a bitch,” and she seemed to be rather proud of that statement. It all played into how she saw herself as a human being. The marriage of Frida’s parents was an unhappy one and although Frida loved and helped to take care of her epileptic father, she did not care for her mother whom she described as a hysterical person.

Before her dreadful accident, Frida was described as a heroic, rebellious and mischievous child. She liked to take risks and in her early youth she really wanted to be a boy. One photo exists of Frida actually dressed like a teenage youth wearing a suit and tie, with her hair short and slicked back. This drama continued on into life when she cut her hair very short anytime she and her husband broke off their relationship. It was as if she was doing penance for her part in the breakup.   

Suffering produces character but it needs to be the right kind of suffering. The suffering that is associated with childhood abuse rarely produces a strong character because the child’s psyche always gets damaged. Frida Kahlo’s psyche was not damaged by any kind of childhood abuse. It was her physical suffering that made her who she was.

It is well known that those who struggle on after suffering from severe afflictions can turn into the most extraordinary people who are able to accomplish great things. But the impetus to survive and conquer does not just arise spontaneously from within, there are always lots of encouraging and supportive people to help and direct the suffering person how to persevere and get to a better place in life.

Pain, suffering and hardship are the triggers that generate action, and the type of hardship suffered is usually the kind of hardship that humanity can view as noble suffering. But the person who is triggered to succeed must also have been born with the intelligence and talent that will help the person to succeed.

It’s impossible to become a famous artist if you are not born with artistic talent as was the case with Frida Kahlo. It is impossible to become a theoretical, physics genius like Stephen Hawking without first being blessed with genius capabilities. English born Stephen Hawking suffered from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and he was raised by stable although somewhat eccentric parents.

Childhood experiences are pivotal in how a child develops. In the case of Pope John Paul II, both of his parents were pious Roman Catholics and he absorbed their religious faith as a matter of course because their religious faith brought comfort to the family during hard times.

Frida Kahlo rejected the Roman Catholic faith of her mother because the mother’s faith brought disruptions into the unhappy family situation. This rejection of her mother’s faith together with her father’s disparity about the workings of God and Frida’s own love for the self professed, atheist Diego Rivera pushed Frida into atheism.

But it has often been said that if a child is pushed into a religion at a very early age, these deep religious beliefs keep their grip on that child throughout the child’s lifetime. A person can purposely cast off the religion of their youth and even profess to be an atheist, but a belief in God remains there lurking in the shadows waiting to spring forth as it did with Josef Stalin during World War II.

Frida Kahlo is quoted as having said, “My painting carries with it the message of pain.” Before she died she said, “I hope the exit is joyful and I hope never to return.”  Does the previous statement indicate a belief in reincarnation? Frida Kahlo was a melancholic enigma, but then again aren’t we all enigmas?

Diana Princess of Wales (1961-1997)

Lady Diana Frances Spencer was a phlegmatic aristocratic Englishwoman who married Prince Charles Philip Arthur George, first born child to Queen Elizabeth II and her husband Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh.

Charles is heir to the British throne but in the beginning he was unable to marry the woman of his choice, the woman he was in love with, Camilla Parker Bowles. Camilla Parker Bowles was a divorcée and it was a foregone conclusion that both Queen Elizabeth and the British government would not give consent to a marriage between Camilla and Charles.

Just like his great uncle King Edward VIII, Charles would have been given a choice, marry the woman he loved or keep his status as heir to the British throne; he couldn’t have both. Unlike King Edward VIII who abdicated so that he could marry divorcée Wallis Simpson, melancholic Charles chose to remain in the line of succession and as a result, Prince Charles came under immense pressure to find a suitable wife.

As first in line to the British throne, Charles was expected to marry a Protestant woman of child bearing age, and the general antiquated view was that she ought to be a virgin. Of course it was well publicized that Prince Charles himself was not a virgin nor was he expected to be a virgin but this double standard had dug its heels deep into the royal monarchy line of descent.

To be fair, Charles was just doing what was expected of him. He bowed down to the expectations of his mother’s loyal subjects, and he also gave in to the pressure exerted on him by his parents. Charles set about finding himself a suitable wife and Lady Diana Spencer fitted the bill perfectly. She was only nineteen years old and she was still holding on to her virginity.

Diana was pretty like a pale, English rose; she was kind, she was patient and she seemed to be a lot of fun when she was relaxing with her friends. Therefore, mid lots of publicity and flutter Charles and Diana were married in a beautiful fairytale setting that was televised around the world. It wasn’t long before Charles and Diana produced two sons that ensured a continuance of the royal bloodline.

But things were not well with the royal couple. Like his melancholic father Prince Philip, Charles had a habit of saying the wrong thing at the wrong time. He expressed disappointment to Diana that he had wanted his second child to be a girl and he didn’t like his new son’s red hair. Diana was hurt and she never forgave him for his insensitivity. But Melancholics are generally insensitive to other people’s feelings and they are unaware how cutting their remarks can be.

Princess Diana had a phlegmatic temperament and although she wasn’t exactly ‘a lamb to the slaughter,’ she was naïve enough and gullible enough to believe that just because she swooned with romantic love for Prince Charles, he should also swoon with romantic love for her. It was a marriage destined for failure and that failure played out painfully in the public scenario, like a television sitcom where not only the whole nation was watching, the whole world was watching.

Phlegmatics tend towards naivety because basically they are quite nice people and they expect the same nice behavior in return. People with phlegmatic temperaments are usually introverts and they shy away from aggressive behavior. They have been coined as the peacemakers of the word but phlegmatic people can be as destructive a presence as any of the other three types if their world goes awry.

Phlegmatics are prone to using passive aggressive behavior to undermine those around them and they tend towards being deceitful and somewhat sneaky. A thwarted Phlegmatic can drive a person to madness and that is exactly what Princess Diana did to the whole royal family. Because of her own unhappiness, Princess Diana became a thorn in the flesh of the house of Windsor.

In the beginning, the royal family used this young lady to their own advantage. Diana had no idea what she was taking on when she decided to accept the marriage offer of a Prince. Her head was filled with visions of sugar plums and glass slippers and at first she wallowed in her new found fame and fortune.

But Diana’s husband was in love with another woman. Diana had to contend with the double barreled whammy that not only did her husband not love her, he loved Camilla and it was reported that Diana became almost hysterical when they argued. It wasn’t long before Prince Charles not only didn’t love his young wife but he didn’t even like her and it is reported that his obvious dislike and his cutting sarcasm drove Diana to despair.                           

But the people of Great Britain did love the beautiful young Princess. They almost worshipped her and she certainly was adored by the multitude because she had the natural ability of a Phlegmatic to be gracious and charming, much like the Queen Mother who was also phlegmatic.

Diana felt a natural empathy towards the ordinary people that crossed her path and she was very kind hearted. She was a good mother and she openly expressed her great love for her two young boys with lots of kisses and hugs. If Diana had had a husband who adored her, this would have been the most celebrated family of the century. But instead the melancholic disapproval of Prince Charles destroyed what little hope there was for the survival of the marriage, and for the first time in history, an heir to the British throne was divorced from the woman who should have been his Queen.

Prince Charles was a haughty, arrogant Melancholic but the trials and tribulations of his first marriage did serve to change him into a more humble human being. When Princess Diana was killed in a car crash, even though they were divorced, he did the honorable thing and flew to France to make arrangements for her body to be returned to England. He also walked behind the casket during Diana’s funeral procession, together with his sons, his father and Diana’s brother.

Diana’s death elicited different reactions from different people. Like the true Choleric that she was, the Queen kept her composure and was slow to react to the death. Diana had sullied the reputation of the Royal family and she might even have toppled the monarchy if she had lived. But because Prince Charles was a Melancholic, his reaction was more emotional and heartfelt, in spite of the open war that had been going on between them.

Melancholic Prince Philip also came to the fore when he offered to walk with his two grandsons behind their mother’s casket, but it could be seen that the Cholerics of the family, Queen Elizabeth and Princess Margaret kept their facial expressions blank and under control. Cholerics are not prone to exhibiting emotional excesses in public except for expressions of irritation and occasional angry outbursts.

     Princess Diana was a very needy young woman and she was the wrong marriage partner for Prince Charles. Whereas Diana needed Charles, Charles needed Camilla, a choleric woman much like his mother the Queen. Diana needed to be loved and she did see herself as the people’s princess, a princess whom the people loved even if the royal family didn’t.

But Diana also needed to convey to her adoring public how much she was being mentally abused by the husband whom she had adored but who had cast her aside in favor of a woman whom the public hated. Camilla was labelled as a destroyer, an older woman who had inserted herself as the third wheel into the fairytale marriage and as Princess Diana explained during a televised interview, “It was rather difficult because there were three people in this marriage.”

But Diana didn’t go quietly. The inherent devious nature of the Phlegmatic rose up in her as she schemed and plotted how to present her sad case of betrayal to the general public. In spite of her avowed determination to live like a normal person, Diana couldn’t give up the spotlight because she loved it so much. She loved the clothes, the glamour and the attention but she also wanted a man to fill the empty hole in her heart. But the empty hole in her heart could not be filled by a man because the empty hole had been created in her childhood.

Diana did try to create a meaningful life for herself. Her natural peacemaking instincts made her a good prospect as an ambassador of good will although some members of the cabinet did refer to her as a ‘loose canon.’ She was lauded for her charitable efforts and she supported the ‘International Campaign to ban Landmines’ to the extent that she did travel overseas to further the cause. But like all abandoned children she continuously searched for the one and only true love who would take away her pain and heartache.

As a child, Diana Spencer was described as shy and vulnerable but she did love to swim, dance and play the piano. Sadly, it was made known that she had failed miserably at high school without ever passing any of the general, lower level exams. This information had no effect on her adoring public but it surely did not help her case with the royal family.

Diana’s parents divorced when she was eight years old and after a bitter battle, Diana’s father was awarded custody of the four Spencer children. In effect his wife, Lady Althorp was forced to abandon her own children. To make matters worse, a few years later, Lord Althorp remarried a woman whom Diana hated. Although Diana had been raised in luxury with private governesses and exclusive schools, she could never shake off the feeling of abandonment that dogged her adult life. She was never able to resolve this emotional problem because she died tragically in a car accident at the age of thirty six.

Princess Diana’s feelings are reflected in how she expressed herself to the public. ”The worst illness of our time is that so many people have to suffer from not ever having been loved.” The princess herself suffered from the erroneous belief that she herself had never been loved, but this was a mistaken belief. The whole world loved her except for the British Royal family and some stuffy unforgiving members of the British government.

Diana had hoped for romantic love, enduring love and all the promises that love has to offer, but Diana had never learned to love herself. She spent her life giving emotional love to others but like so many other people, she just didn’t know that in order to experience true love, first you must search for some kind of understanding of yourself. In the case of psychologically damaged children, this search for understanding can take a lifetime.

The unfulfilled search for love is actually a person’s attempt to find the parent or parents who denied that love in the first place. This is the reason we keep partnering up with the same type of person over and over again. As soon as we attach ourselves to the proxy parent, we pick up right where we left off in the never ending conflict that used to exist between us and our unloving parent. The same scenario is played out time and time again as we try to explain our point of view and get the kind of love that we want.

We try to change the person we team up with into our ideal mate, but our not-so-ideal mate seems to follow the same pattern of unloving behavior that we were so used to in our childhood. This is because we keep repeating those subconscious, unhealthy, behavior patterns that keep on contributing to a bad situation.

If we sulked as a child, we will continue to sulk as an adult feeling totally justified at our own behavior. If we were filled with anger in childhood we will still be filled with anger in adulthood, because that anger has never been resolved.  All the negative emotions of the child are still lurking inside the brain of the child who has grown into adulthood therefore the search for true love must by necessity include a brutal self analysis.

In other words the starting point in the search for love must include a brutal attack on the ego, but before attacking the ego the temperament type of the individual must be determined so that both the negative and the positive inherited traits of that temperament type can be recognized and dealt with.

It has been said that when a man has sexual intercourse he is actually trying to get back into the womb from whence he came. It is also said that our search for love is an attempt to return to the Garden of Eden where we used to be loved by God. Some people believe that when men and women seek each other out, it is Adam’s attempt to replace his missing rib or it is Eve’s attempt to crawl back into the male body from where she originated. But the truth of the matter is that we are part of the animal kingdom. We are driven to mate because our hormones dictate to us, and it is part of nature for a male and a female to join together for the sake of reproduction.

As a higher species we also demand unconditional love, companionship, intellectual communication, emotional support and a monogamous relationship. This is an impossible dream for most people. Just like in the animal kingdom, some couples are able to be monogamous but others are not.

When the marriage of Charles and Diana broke down, Charles linked up with his mistress Camilla and in the end they were allowed to marry. Thanks to Diana, she produced two princes of the realm, her son William who is a Phlegmatic and her son Harry who is a Melancholic. They are able to carry on the precious bloodline. But the blood of the royal family is exactly the same as everyone else’s blood or is it?; the royal families of Europe still carry two distinct faulty genetic components in their bloodline, Hemophilia and Porphyria.

The exclusivity of being a member of a royal family lies in the minds of the people and also in the minds of the royals themselves. This exclusivity does not lie in their physical attributes or in any special abilities but arose from an old belief that Royals were a distinct and separate race of people.