Neurodynamics of Personality

What are the component parts of personality? Of what is the "self" composed? What is it about personality that can change? Why is change often so slow? This book synthesizes material from neuroscience and several other scientific disciplines into a comprehensive, empirically based, and clinically useful conceptual model for understanding human personality. Rather than adopting existing psychological theories of personality and grafting neuroscience onto them, the volume takes cognitive neuroscience and biology as its starting points. Illuminated are the ways that the organization of the brain is reflected in the organization of personality, and how the brain's nonconscious learning and memory systems mediate different aspects of personality functioning. The framework presented here serves as a context in which more purely psychological theories may be understood and evaluated, and provides a rationale for psychological and psychiatric interventions. It offers a clear way of thinking about the apparent stability of personality across time, why change does or does not occur, and what conditions are likely to facilitate or retard change. This book contains vital insights for clinicians concerned with the relationship between the mind and the brain, including psychiatrists, psychologists, neuropsychologists, and behavioral neurologists, as well as scholars and advanced students in these areas.