The Emotional Foundations of Personality: A Neurobiological and Evolutionary Approach

by Kenneth L. Davis, Jaak Panksepp PhD, Mark Solms (Foreword by)

Overview

A CHOICE Magazine Outstanding Academic Title of 2018.

A novel approach to understanding personality, based on evidence that we share more than we realize with other mammals.

This book presents the wealth of scientific evidence that our personality emerges from evolved primary emotions shared by all mammals. Yes, your dog feels love—and many other things too. These subcortically generated emotions bias our actions, alter our perceptions, guide our learning, provide the basis for our thoughts and memories, and become regulated over the course of our lives.

Understanding personality development from the perspective of mammals is a groundbreaking approach, and one that sheds new light on the ways in which we as humans respond to life events, both good and bad.

Jaak Panksepp, famous for discovering laughter in rats and for creating the field of affective neuroscience, died in April 2017. This book forms part of his lasting legacy and impact on a wide range of scientific and humanistic disciplines. It will be essential reading for anyone trying to understand how we act in the world, and the world’s impact on us.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393710588
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	03/27/2018
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	352
File size:	5 MB

About the Author

Ken Davis completed his PhD under Jaak Panksepp at Bowling Green State University; they worked on an assessment and theory of personality for twenty years.
Jaak Panksepp, PhD, was the Baily Endowed Chair of Animal Well-Being Science at Washington State University's College of Veterinary Medicine, emeritus Distinguished Professor in the Department of Psychology at Bowling Green State University, and the Head of Northwestern University's Falk Center for Molecular Therapeutics.
Mark Solms discovered the forebrain mechanisms of dreaming. He is director of neuropsychology of the Neuroscience Institute at the University of Cape Town, South Africa, where he lives. He is also honorary lecturer in neurosurgery at the Royal London Hospital School and honorary Fellow at the American College of Psychiatrists.

Editorial Reviews

"This work by Davis and Panksepp extends but also recontextualizes Carrell's classical factor analytic work, which has long dominated the field of personality theory. This much-needed volume is not only a significant addition to The Norton Series on Interpersonal Neurobiology, it is simply a must-read for all personality theorists, while also offering critical insights to psychotherapists, clinical psychologists, and other mental health disciplines. Highly recommended!"

Douglas Watt PhD

"This important final work from Panksepp, who died in 2017, is a must read for those interested in personality theory, emotion theory, neuroscience, and clinical psychology. . . Essential."

CHOICE Magazine

"I felt as though I had experienced an in-depth seminar with Panksepp and Davis. This is a thought-provoking work. Its wealth of background and research is outstanding. The writing style is moderately academic, yet engaging. . . . [T]ruly remarkable."

Psych Central

"Modern neuroscience understands, at long last, the brain basis of emotions. But how do emotions become personality? This remarkable book explores Darwin's insights, personality variation across species (from fish to primates), and the modern neuroscience of feelings. Importantly, it also has a lively account of the probable brain science behind the "big five" personality traits. Highly readable, it is part survey, critique, and explanatory model, tackling a key question in modern neuroscience: what makes us different?"

Professor of Neuropsychology Oliver Turnbull

"Jaak Panksepp has left an important legacy of work on behavior, mind, and brain. This is one other contribution to that legacy."

Antonio Damasio

"[A]n invaluable conversation starter for an overdue discussion on the nature of individual differences as well as on the tenets upon which personality theories rely. . . [A] delightfully written text."

Metapsychology Online Reviews

"This important integration of Jaak Panksepp's foundational contributions to understanding the sub-cortical processes involved in emotion and behavior with research on personality helps move the fields of development, psychology, psychiatry, and psychotherapy forward by anchoring our work with biologically based, evolutionarily informed insights into the factors that shape our minds."

Daniel J. Siegel