Personality Coherence and Incoherence

This book presents the Complex-System Approach to Personality, which seeks to promote the development of integrative theorizing and subsumes particular insights from earlier models while permitting both within-person and between-person comparisons.

This book presents the Complex-System Approach to Personality, which seeks to promote the development of integrative theorizing and subsumes particular insights from earlier models while permitting both within-person and between-person comparisons. The C-SAP is based on an assumption that a systems approach potentially might advance the core concerns of personality psychology, with a priority on personality coherence and incoherence. Within this approach the author postulates the System of Regulation and Integration Stimulation-a hierarchically organized control system-as a fundamental structure of personality architecture, and provides a complete account of the integrative role of the SRIS within the personality system. In addition, the author introduces to this theory the affective traits (anxiety and depression) as elements of intraindividual coherence/incoherence, with the intention of offering a more complete explanation for the functional links between negative affectivity and attentional processing. From the Foreword . . . “In this detailed and thought-provoking book, Malgorzata Fajkowska provides a novel perspective on personality and its expressions in anxiety and depression. Her theory is well founded, resplendent in factual description and theoretical nuance, and bound to stimulate new thinking and research.” Philip J. Corr, City University London Prepublication praise . . . “This book represents a substantial advance. The author develops a complex theoretical edifice that combines in a judicial way the biological, psychological, and situational approaches. I am certain that Fajkowska’s new theory will exert much influence in the years ahead.” Michael W. Eysenck, Roehampton University, Whitelands College “A masterpiece. This book includes many new ideas, presents new material, and constitutes the platform for a new approach to personality. Fajkowska has attempted a tour de force and has written a book that will be difficult–if not impossible–for anyone interested in personality to overlook.” Shulamith Kreitler, University of Tel Aviv “In this book Malgorzata Fajkowska presents her Complex-System Approach to Personality, a pioneering attempt to integrate personality research that proposes a model in which temperament traits and attentional processes are functionally related. An original and unique contribution to the literature on personality.” Jan Strelau, University of Social Sciences and Humanities

Foreword by Philip J. Corr Personality coherence and incoherence: An overview of the book Part I. A Complex-System Approach to Personality Introduction General view of a system-based approach to personality Chapter 1 A Complex-System Approach to Personality: Related meta-theoretical issues Chapter 2 Specifying the personality architecture within the Complex-System Approach to Personality: From related meta-theory to theory Part II. Anxiety and Depression in the Complex-System Approach to Personality Introduction Introducing anxiety and depression: The complex phenomena Chapter 3 Anxiety and depression within the System of Regulation and Integration Stimulation Chapter 4 Anxiety and depression within the structure of coherent and incoherent types of personalities Chapter 5 Coherent/incoherent personality structures and attentional stimulation processing Part III. Epilogue Chapter 6 Looking to the future: A need for integrative models of personality References Index

• By (author) Malgorzata Fajkowska

Reviews "...I would recommend this book to any serious scholar of personality that would like to think about and consider the broader issues in this domain, and what they might mean in terms of how we understand and study personality. When read with this goal in mind, this book certainly provides a worthwhile perspective that contributes to our understanding of the complexity of personality." -- Nicholas A. Kuiper, Elsevier From the Foreword "In this detailed and thought-provoking book, Malgorzata Fajkowska provides a novel perspective on personality and its expressions in anxiety and depression. Her theory is well founded, resplendent in factual description and theoretical nuance, and bound to stimulate new thinking and research." Philip J. Corr, University of East Anglia Prepublication praise "This book represents a substantial advance. The author develops a complex theoretical edifice that combines in a judicial way the biological, psychological, and situational approaches to personality. I am certain that Fajkowska's new theory will exert much influence in the years ahead." Michael W. Eysenck, Roehampton University, Whitelands College "A masterpiece. This book includes many new ideas, presents new material, and constitutes the platform for a new approach to personality. Fajkowska has attempted a tour de force and has written a book that will be difficult- if not impossible-for anyone interested in personality to overlook." Shulamith Kreitler, Tel Aviv University "In this book Malgorzata Fajkowska presents her Complex-System Approach to Personality, a pioneering attempt to integrate personality research that proposes a model in which temperament traits and attentional processes are functionally related. An original and unique contribution to the literature on personality." Jan Strelau, University of Social Sciences and Humanities
—