Ways of Sorting Character — From Sasang Medicine to MBTI
2026-09-03
The attempt to understand people by sorting them into a few kinds has spanned every culture and age. No classification is perfect, yet typology offers a handle to grasp the complex human being. Past Life Lab's tests, too, are a light descendant of this long tradition.
The East — reading temperament through the body
In late Joseon, Lee Je-ma's Sasang medicine divided people into four constitutions: Tae-yang, Tae-eum, So-yang, So-eum. This was not merely a bodily classification but an integrated view spanning temperament and one's stance toward life. The thought of yin-yang and the five elements was likewise a long effort to read human disposition against the grain of nature.
The West — a lineage of typologies
Ancient Greece's four humors sorted people into sanguine, choleric, phlegmatic, and melancholic. This idea later flowed into Jung's psychological types, on which today's widely used MBTI was built. Frameworks like the Enneagram and the Big Five, too, each measure the grain of a person in their own way.
The wisdom of holding typology
No typology can fully contain a person. What matters is not nailing down "I am this type," but gaining, through the frame, an occasion to see yourself anew and understand others a little more. A type is not an answer but a thread for conversation.
The past-life test unfolds this tradition as light play dressed in period costume. As answers gather along an axis (say, heart vs. reason), a past-life type that resembles you emerges — yet it is no diagnosis, only one mirror in which to see yourself.