The first type, the past type, sees time as being circular. For him, the past crops up in the present and then returns to the past as a memory. He enjoys collecting souvenirs and keeping diaries. He tells stories about Great Aunt Hattie and always remembers your birthday.

Past types are pegged by this system as emotional people who see the world in a highly subjective way. For instance, school principal one, past type, could identify with the fight and know how to handle it because of some past experience, whether it be similar fights as a child himself or ones previous dealt with as the school principal.

In addition, past types usually follow strict moral codes and often are valued more for what they are than for what they do. This quality itself, because it lends authoritarian strength to one who possesses it, might cause the students to quit the fighting.

Past types often have been found to be skillful at assessing the exact emotional tenor of an event and are adept at influencing others' emotions, according to the Mann group.

Research reveals that many past-oriented people are flexible in early years when they do no have much of a personal past to draw upon. However, the dash of youth is often replaced by a need for stability and usually is rooted by age 35 or so. From this age onward, they are conservatives.

They need to see things in the ways which were popular, fashionable and appropriate in their younger days. Explain Dr Mann.

This applies, with exceptions of course, to personal taste in clothing fashions, music appreciation, and other social and environmental factors.

In short, the past type often clings to the well-established way with nostalgic verve. Also, the past type finds it difficult to be punctual since the on-going feeling is more important than his next task.

The goal of these people is to develop a language of the heart, rather than of the mind. To develop those techniques which make memories live, and to dignify any act of remembrance, those are the essential concerns of past-oriented types, explain the authors in the Journal of Analytical Psychology.