Objections!

Personality models can be a touchy topic for a lot of people, it seems. The idea of being 'defined' makes them uncomfortable, so they reject the idea incredulously without actually reading about it.

The temperaments are not meant to 'define' people any more than the words 'liberal' or 'conservative' or 'man' or 'woman' do, which I've tried to address on this site, but you'd actually have to READ the site first to know that!

Some people send me emails expressing their objections to the concept, which often prove interesting examples of the temperaments in play. To increase understanding, and, I admit, for my own personal catharsis, I shall add some of them here.

I am MelancholicPhlegmatic, by the way, which may come across in my own writing style.

Email #1

I can strongly assume you won't get my point, but - oh well.

1) "You'd never mistake a piece of Rock music for Classical, though."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symphonic_rock

"Symphonic rock can be described as combining of progressive rock with
classical music traditions."

conclusion: OP is wrong.

tl;dr: I just love how you make false assumptions based on your
fragile intuition and then develop them into complex, albeit
completely senseless systems of theories. Try to focus on your facts
before you jump to conclusions.

2) Categorizing people or music doesn't hurt the people nor music. It
hurts your ability to understand people, by putting name tags on them
instead of understanding them.

The only way to understand people is to live with people. Talk with
them, laugh with them, go out with them, cry with them, love them,
hate them, make love with them and cause them pain.

tl;dr: OP is wrong

3) Don't try to be a homebrew wiseass psychologist when you don't have
nor the skills nor the smarts to go into other people's brains. You're
a smart kid, you're making good flash games, your music and art skill
varies from bearable to pretty good; you've got your downsides, but
you've got your ups, you've got things you can (and should and
probably are) be proud of - focus on them, they're your forte.
Understanding people is NOT. Not wanting to be excessively rude, I
know twelve year old girls with more emotional intelligence and more
understanding of human psychology than you, bud. DIY psychology is
always a bad omen; from 20 years from now, you'll probably/hopefully
understand that.

cheers, mate.

eM

He also included this image: [LINK]

This is a textbook choleric response. He asserts dominance over me using many put-downs and condescending language such as 'kid' and 'bud' and 'mate'. His approach is aggressive and confrontational, and the conflict is about him asserting his ego rather than discussing the truth of the issue at hand.

I probably shouldn't reply to these things, but this time I did, and this is what I said:

Well, you're obviously and quite blatantly choleric. Understanding this allows me to feel better about consuming your vitriol because I understand that it's just some peoples' nature to be that way, though your extremely confrontational and aggressive approach, full of hostile put-downs, is still extremely hurtful to me. I wonder if that brings you joy...

You're missing the point of the music analogy. Perhaps you should also pick on the animal one and say that zebras and cows fit the description too, or that some horses don't in fact have pointed ears. Analogies only aid in understanding; they're not meant to be perfect fits and never will be.
The music thing was meant to show how 'genre' labels can be applied to sets of variables in order to communicate a lot of information in a concise manner without doing away with any of the uniqueness. You can say "I like rock music" and people will have an idea of what you are talking about; it saves you from going on about the details, and allows you to 'share an interest' with people who like the same genre, to attend 'rock concerts' knowing what to expect, and so on.
Interestingly, if rock were choleric and classical were melancholic, symphonic rock might be choleric/melancholic, as all temperaments come in paired blends.

As I tried to make abundantly clear on the temperaments page, these 'labels' only apply to one of a person's many facets; 'personality' and 'temperament' are not synonymous. Knowing a person's temperament tells you as much about them as knowing their sex, or that they're a 'liberal' or 'conservative'; that is, a bit, but not much, and you'll still need to get to know them to truly understand them *as people*, as the individuals that they undeniably are. 
Personalities are far more complex than to be described in a word or two, and I kept trying to establish this but I'm not sure that you would have read it, or maybe you rejected it incredulously; much of your aggression comes off as an 'I'm so unique, you can't define me!!' kind of defensiveness. Destroy the things that seek to 'put you in a place' so as to prove that you're above them and all that.

Just to be clear, I didn't make up this temperaments concept. It was introduced to me by a friend years ago, and I fell in love with it because it increased my understanding of myself and of others immediately and has been of great use to me ever since. The site I linked to is my own writing, but it's an attempt to explain all the knowledge I've picked up over the years in a clean and hopefully useful way.

I do not wish for people to 'take it seriously', but I do think that it allows us to more easily understand others, to know what approaches might work with them.
For example, if you'd understood that my mind doesn't work like your own, you'd perhaps not have addressed this issue in such an aggressive and confrontational approach; you may as well try to get a Chinese finger trap off by pulling really hard. You approach seems to suggest that this... conflict... you've started is about asserting yourself, dominating me and my ideas, rather than about discussing the merits and flaws of the concept. You simply seem to want to put me in my place, which I can imagine makes you feel big and strong. Congratulations. 

I'd be very open to improving the descriptions on the pages to clear up any confusion or to be less irritating, if approached about it on terms that didn't just immediately send me into a panic and a cold sweat.

I understand that personality type things aren't everyone's cup of tea, but people who don't like them *could* simply ignore them, and those that are interested may gain some kind of enjoyment from them.