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IJP 83(5):1201-1205 (2002)

The Neurodynamics of Personality.: Jim Grigsby and David Stevens New York, NY: Guilford Press. 2000.

Authors: Lissa Weinstein, Larry J. Siever MD

Abstract

This ambitious book, coauthored by a research neuropsychologist and a psychoanalyst, attempts to build a comprehensive model of personality compatible with current research on brain function. Personality is so defined as to include the typical patterns of behaviour and attitudes commonly called character, individually expressive motivational and emotional states, and the person's relatively enduring representations both of the world and of themselves. The author's premise, which is explicated in detail throughout the first half of the book, is:

Personality reflects the emergent properties of a dynamic, hierarchically ordered modular distributed self organizing functional system, the primary objective of which is the successful adaptation of the individual to his or her physical and social environment (p. 19).

In this definition, ‘self organizing’ does not refer to the ‘self’ in psychological terms, but is used to refer to a system that sets and resets itself according to law-based processes.

The authors, influenced by the work of A. R. Luria and Janos Szentagothai, seek to present a psychological model grounded in the more basic level of analysis offered by biology, which will supplement existing theories by offering a ‘metapsychological theoretical framework’. Recognising that terms such as representation and self are used variously by different disciplines, they have chosen to rely primarily on the language of neuroscience and discuss concepts in functional terms. While the authors never claim that personality is isomorphic with brain function, they do believe that there are lawbased probabilistic relationships between what takes place at the molecular and neural levels and the associated psychological activity. The biological processes underlying personality are in a constant state of fluid adaptation, but the time-scale over which observations about personality are made causes the processes to appear relatively invariant. Thus, personality is not a structure but a

IJP 83(5):1201-1205 (2002)

The Neurodynamics of Personality.: Jim Grigsby and David Stevens New York, NY: Guilford Press. 2000.

Authors: Lissa Weinstein, Larry J. Siever MD

Abstract

Personality reflects the emergent properties of a dynamic, hierarchically ordered modular distributed self organizing functional system, the primary objective of which is the successful adaptation of the individual to his or her physical and social environment (p. 19).

In this definition, ‘self organizing’ does not refer to the ‘self’ in psychological terms, but is used to refer to a system that sets and resets itself according to law-based processes.