Toward a New Personology: An Evolutionary Model

Offers an evolutionary theory of personality, connecting the conceptual structures of personology with its foundations in the natural sciences. The author presents a unified approach to personality theory, addresses personality disorders and considers therapeutic interventions.

Having weathered the storm of polemic and willful neglect from both the professional and academic communities, personology is experiencing a second flowering. Considering any personality theory as unscientific and archaic, proponents of the empirical and positivist schools that predominated in the sixties and seventies chose to dismiss a century of analytic trailblazing by such as Freud, Jung, Horney, Sullivan, et al., and concentrated instead on "objectively real" traits, S-R bonds, or statistical factors. Now, with the advent of the American Psychiatric Association's most recent Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-III-R), personality disorders are once again deemed fundamental to an understanding of other psychopathologies. And nowhere has personology experienced a more full and viable recrudescence than in the work of Theodore Millon, author of Disorders of Personality and contributor to DSM-III and the forthcoming DSM-IV. In this groundbreaking book, Dr. Millon explicates his new theory of personality, its foundations and applications to the study of psychopathology. He draws on the principles inherent in the physical and biological sciences to fashion a model based, in great part, in modern evolutionary theory. This innovative conceptual structure sees personality in terms of its basic survival and adaptive functions--especially in the polarities of pleasure/pain, passivity/activity and self/other. After developing the foundations of his conceptual model, Millon shows how it undergirds much of psychology in general, as well as psychopathologic theory, classification, assessment, and intervention. Rooted in natural scientific principles and exhibiting all the intellectual rigor typical of its illustrious antecedents, this groundbreaking work is destined to be seminal in informing the next generation of mental health clinicians, researchers, and theorists. An essential tool for psychologists, psychiatrists and academic personality psychologists, it will broaden and deepen your understanding of personality and its disorders.

Having weathered the storm of polemic and willful neglect from both the professional and academic communities, personology is experiencing a second flowering. Considering any personality theory as unscientific and archaic, proponents of the empirical and positivist schools that predominated in the sixties and seventies chose to dismiss a century of analytic trailblazing by such as Freud, Jung, Horney, Sullivan, et al., and concentrated instead on "objectively real" traits, S-R bonds, or statistical factors. Now, with the advent of the American Psychiatric Association's most recent Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-III-R), personality disorders are once again deemed fundamental to an understanding of other psychopathologies. And nowhere has personology experienced a more full and viable recrudescence than in the work of Theodore Millon, author of Disorders of Personality and contributor to DSM-III and the forthcoming DSM-IV. In this groundbreaking book, Dr. Millon explicates his new theory of personality, its foundations and applications to the study of psychopathology. He draws on the principles inherent in the physical and biological sciences to fashion a model based, in great part, in modern evolutionary theory. This innovative conceptual structure sees personality in terms of its basic survival and adaptive functions―especially in the polarities of pleasure/pain, passivity/activity and self/other. After developing the foundations of his conceptual model, Millon shows how it undergirds much of psychology in general, as well as psychopathologic theory, classification, assessment, and intervention. Rooted in natural scientific principles and exhibiting all the intellectual rigor typical of its illustrious antecedents, this groundbreaking work is destined to be seminal in informing the next generation of mental health clinicians, researchers, and theorists. An essential tool for psychologists, psychiatrists and academic personality psychologists, it will broaden and deepen your understanding of personality and its disorders.

About the author Theodore Millon, PhD, is Professor of Psychology, University of Miami, and Professor in Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School. While Dr. Millon received his master's degree and doctorate in psychology (major areas: personality, social and clinical psychology), he has been and continues to be an avid student of physics and philosophy. Currently, he is engaged in a number of important research projects, including: the logic for integrating psychotherapeutic treatment techniques; studies of the psychological correlates of disease disposition and course; developing self-report inventories for psychiatric and medical patients; and investigations into the theoretical grounding of diagnostic taxonomies. A prolific author, Dr. Millon has written or edited more than 20 books and has contributed chapters and articles to numerous books and journals in the field. Among his most well-known books by Wiley are Disorders of Personality: DSM-III: Axis II and Personality and Its Disorders: A Biosocial Learning Approach.