The separation of biomedical and psychosocial approaches to mental illness has hampered both research and treatment because only a fully integrated view of life permits a person to develop wisdom and well-being. In this long-awaited work, psychiatrist Robert Cloninger argues that all persons have spontaneous needs for happiness, self-understanding, and love, and he describes a way toward achieving psychological coherence that satisfies these basic human needs. The novel synthesis that he provides is based on the latest findings and concepts in (...) neuroscience, genetics, long-term biopsychosocial research, and complex networks, combined with a reliable, quantitative way of measuring human thought, social relationships, and creativity. (shrink)

Recent research on the relations of personality to well-being shows that the people who are most healthy, happy and fulfilled are those who are high in all three of the character traits of self-directedness, cooperativeness, and self-transcendence as measured by the Temperament and Character Inventory. In the past, the healthy personality has often been considered to require only high self-directedness and high cooperativeness. However, now the self-centred behaviour of people who are low in self-transcendence is degrading the conditions needed for (...) sustainable life by all human beings. Consequently, human beings need to and can develop their capacity for self-transcendence in order to maintain their individual and collective well-being. (shrink)