1st Edition

Brain, Attachment, Personality An Introduction to Neuroaffective Development

By Susan Hart Copyright 2008
    400 Pages
    by Routledge

    400 Pages
    by Routledge

    This book is intended as an inspiration and as an introduction to what Susan Hart has called neuroaffective developmental psychology. As an underlying theme throughout the book, she seeks to emphasize the importance of attachment for the formation of personality in all its diversity. This book presents a merger of systems that are not normally brought together in a structured psychodynamic context. Thus it operates on three levels: a neurobiological level, an intrapsychological level, and an interpersonal level. It also focuses on the brain structures that are essential for the formation of relationships, personality development, and emotions. It attempts to provide an understanding of the way that the uniquely human nervous system develops capacities for empathy, mentalization, and reflection that enable us to address such aspects as: past and present, interpersonal relations, ethics, art, and aesthetics. Susan Hart has endeavoured to make the text meaningful and comprehensible in order to make the topic interesting and inspiring to the reader, and to spark an interest in further studies.

    About the Author , Foreword , The dynamic brain in a dynamic environment: an epigenetic understanding , Genetics and embryology: the cradle of personality , The brain: a complex and dynamic structure , Windows of opportunity: the programmable hardwired system , Resonance, synchronicity, and mirror neurons: the basic units of brain circuitry and affect attunement , The basic body-sensing and affect-regulating brain: brainstem and cerebellum , The brain of motor systems and emotions: the diencephalon and the limbic system , The brain of complex emotions, mentalization, abstraction, and reason: the parietal lobes and the prefrontal cortex , Neurotransmitters, peptides, and hormones: the messengers of the brain , The affect-regulating system of the brain , Girls, boys, men, and women: the impact of sex hormones and environment on differences between the sexes , The lateralized brain: right and left hemisphere , Memory and its impact on the formation of personality and mentalization , The foundation of personality: self and consciousness , Epilogue

    Biography

    Susan Hart