Person-centered Therapeutics

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Published: Apr 29, 2011
DOI: https://doi.org/10.5750/ijpcm.v1i1.21

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C. Robert Cloninger
Sansone Family Center for Well-Being at Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, MO, USA
Kevin M. Cloninger
Anthropedia Foundation, Washington, Missouri

Abstract

A clinician’s effectiveness in treatment depends substantially on his or her attitude toward -- and understanding of -- the patient as a person endowed with self-awareness and the will to direct his or her own future.  The assessment of personality in the therapeutic encounter is a crucial foundation for forming an effective working alliance with shared goals. Helping a person to reflect on their personality provides a mirror image of their strengths and weaknesses in adapting to life’s many challenges. The Temperament and Character Inventory (TCI) provides an effective way to describe personality thoroughly and to predict both the positive and negative aspects of health.  Strengths and weaknesses in TCI personality traits allow strong predictions of individual differences of all aspects of well-being.  Diverse therapeutic techniques, such as diet, exercise, mood self-regulation, meditation, or acts of kindness, influence health and personality development in ways that are largely indistinguishable from one another or from effective allopathic treatments.  Hence the development of well-being appears to be the result of activating a synergistic set of mechanisms of well-being, which are expressed as fuller functioning, plasticity, and virtue in adapting to life’s challenges

Article Details

Issue
Vol. 1 No. 1 (2011): April
Section
Third Geneva Conference on Person-Centered Medicine: Person-centered Clinical Care Activities
Author Biography

C. Robert Cloninger, Sansone Family Center for Well-Being at Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, MO, USA

Prof Cloninger is Wallace and Lucille Renard Professor of Psychiatry, Professor of Psychology and Genetics, and Director of the Sansone Family Center for Well-Being at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. He is also Scientific Director of the Anthropedia Institute Dr. Cloninger received his B.A. with High Honors and Special Honors in Philosophy, Psychology, and Anthropology from the University of Texas at Austin, 1966.  He received his M.D. from Washington University in 1970 and an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Umea, Sweden in 1983.  He has published 10 books and more than 400 articles in psychiatry, psychology, and genetics.   His recent books include the Origins of Cooperation and Altruism by Springer, Feeling Good: The Science of Well-Being by Oxford University Press, and Personality and Psychopathology by American Psychiatric Press.  Among his many awards, Dr. Cloninger has received the American Psychiatric Association’s Adolf Meyer Award (1993) and Judd Marmor Award (2009), and lifetime achievement awards from the American Society of Addiction Medicine (2000) and the International Society of Psychiatric Genetics (2003).  He is a Distinguished Life Fellow of the APA, a fellow of the American Academy for the Advancement of Science, and a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences.  The Institute of Scientific Information ranks him among the most highly cited psychiatrists and psychologists in the world. His personality inventories have been used in more than 4000 peer-reviewed publications.