From the Back Cover

Selfhood, Identity and Personality Styles is an interdisciplinary study that describes a new perspective on psychopathology based on the search for the source of personal meaning and identity. The opening section develops a first-person approach to selfhood and personal identity, discussing relevant topics in personality and social psychology, developmental psychology, psychology of emotions and neuroscience. The second part presents five different personality styles distinguished on the basis of their emotional inclinations: Eating Disorder-prone, Obsessive-Compulsive prone, personalities prone to Hypochondria-Hysteria, Phobia–prone and Depression-prone. The classification based on affectivity makes it possible to illustrate the continuity between the study of personality and that of psychopathology. One distinctive feature of this extraordinary book is a discussion of recently published evidence that functional magnetic resonance imaging can show how brain activity may be related to personality styles.

Praise for Selfhood, Identity and Personality Styles:

“Arciero and Bondolfi show in fine detail how the sense of self emerges in first- and second-person experiences, forming a dynamic, emotive and narrative identity; they then brilliantly demonstrate how this self-identity gets distorted and disrupted in the pathologies that directly undermine this process. This is a landmark study that brings together materials from multiple disciplines. Their analysis provides a clear account of how our existential being-in-the-world is modulated by narrative practices. They show how the ongoing construction of personality delineated by the various emotional tendencies that are sedimented in the individual’s life comes to be reflected in personal narrative. Arciero and Bondolfi continuously make insightful connections between research in developmental psychology, neuroscience, and emotion studies and then carry these basic insights into the realm of psychiatry. The psychiatric analyses offered here are thus enriched by clinical vignettes and enlightened by the integration of philosophical (especially phenomenological and hermeneutical), psychological, neuroscientific, and literary dimensions”.

Shaun Gallagher, Professorof Philosophy, University of Central Florida

“Arciero and Bondolfi have written a timely, thought-provoking and challenging book, providing the reader with a refreshingly new account of Self-identity and its disorders. A cogent and novel contribution to psychiatric thought that wonderfully integrates philosophy, psychopathology and contemporary neuroscience. This book will push psychiatry in new directions. A must read!.”

Vittorio Gallese, Professor of Human Physiology, University of Parma ,Italy

“Selfhood, Identity, and Personality Styles is a highly ambitious work of theoretical synthesis: neuroscience, phenomenology, and social constructionism are joined together with the study of both literature and psychopathology. Arciero and Bondolfi offer sophisticated and intriguing discussions not only of mirror neurons and developmental psychology, but also of ideas from Aristotle, Kant, and Heidegger, of characters from Dostoevsky, Kleist, and Pessoa, and of patients from clinical practice. A ground-breaking, first attempt to show the relevance of the interdisciplinary study of basic self-experience for our understanding of character styles and personality disorders.”

Louis A. Sass, Professor of Clinical Psychology, Rutgers University

About the Author

Giampiero Arciero is  Director of  the Institute of Constructivist Psychology and Psychotherapy of Rome (IPRA) and works as a Consultant at the Department of Psychiatry, University Hospital of Geneva. He also collaborates with the Psychiatric Neuroscience Group, University of Bari, Italy.

His publications  include Experience,Explanation, and the Quest for Coherence (2000) in Neimeyer A.R., Raskin D.J. (Eds), Constructions of Disorder. Identity, Personality  and Emotional Regulation (2004) in Freeman, A., Mahoney, M. J., & DeVito, P. (Eds.). Cognition and psychotherapy (2nd ed.). He is the author of Studi e dialoghi sull’identità personale (2002),Estudios y Dialogos sobre la identidad personal (2 edition)(2005),Sulle Tracce di Se’(2006) Tras las huellas de sí mismo (2009).

Guido Bondolfi is a psychiatrist, psychotherapist and a mindfulness instructor (MBCT and MBSR). He is “Chargé de Cours” at the Medical School of the University of Geneva (Switzerland) where he teaches Psychiatry and Psychotherapy. As head of a “Secteur” and of a specialized programme for depressive disorders at the Department of Psychiatry of the Geneva University Hospitals, Guido Bondolfi’s research interests include cognitive psychotherapy, mood disorders and pathological gambling.

He is the author of more than fifty peer reviewed publications and of a book: “Traitement intégré de la dépression : de la résistance à la prévention de la rechute” (2004).