Neurodynamics of Personality

by Grigsby, Jim; Stevens, David W.

• ISBN13: 9781572307476
• ISBN10: 1572307471
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2001-12-19
• Publisher: The Guilford Press

Summary

How is each individual's unique personality formed? What is it about p ersonality that can change, and why is change often so slow? Promising approaches to these perennial questions are suggested by the explosio n of recent research in neuroscience and brain functioning. This timel y volume presents a coherent, empirically based, and clinically useful framework for understanding personality. Jim Grigsby and David Steven s illuminate links between the organization of the brain and the unfol ding of personality, and show how different aspects of personality are mediated by the brain's nonconscious learning and memory systems. Pro viding new insights for clinicians, students, and researchers, this bo ok builds a critical bridge between existing psychological theories of personality and emerging knowledge in clinical neuroscience.

Author Biography

Jim Grigsby, PhD, is a research scientist at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center, where he is Associate Professor in the Department of Medicine, Division of Geriatrics, and Senior Researcher at the Center for Health Sciences and Policy Research David Stevens, PhD, a practicing clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst, is Associate Clinical Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center. He is on the faculties of the Denver Institute for Psychoanalysis and the Minnesota Psychoanalytic Institute. He is also an adjunct faculty member of the University of Denver doctoral program in child clinical psychology

Table of Contents

Introduction	1	(12)
Overview	13	(12)
Natural Selection and Adaptation	25	(14)
Learning and Synaptic Plasticity	39	(15)
Modularity of Brain and Psychological Functioning	54	(29)
Modularity of Memory	83	(21)
Dynamics	104	(27)
Neurodynamics: Neurons and Neural Networks	131	(15)
Normal and Pathological Dynamics	146	(18)
The Physiological State and the Biology of Emotion and Motivation	164	(25)
The Dynamics of Temperament	189	(14)
Monkey Business: On the Nature of Cognition in Nonhuman Primates	203	(19)
Conscious and Nonconscious Functioning	222	(41)
Modularity, Dynamics, and Functional Systems	263	(16)
Regulation of Behavior	279	(26)
Development, Stability, and Change of Character	305	(22)
Biology of the Self	327	(28)
General Principles of Change	355	(22)
References	377	(44)
Index	421