The Hidden Genius of Emotion: Lifespan Transformations of Personality (Studies in Emotion and Social Interaction)
Cambridge University Press, 9/26/2002
EAN 9780521640947, ISBN10: 0521640946
Hardcover, 548 pages, 22.9 x 15.2 x 3.5 cm
Language: English
This thoughtful and beautifully written book demonstrates compellingly that emotions are central to personality development across the lifespan. Carol Magai and Jeannette Haviland-Jones draw on a wealth of textual and film material to forge an original empirical and theoretical analysis of the dynamics of emotion in human development. For its content, the work examines the lives of three mid-century psychologists, Carl Rogers, Albert Ellis, and Fritz Perls. Each man adopted a unique stance on the question of emotion in personality and in therapeutic interventions and, tellingly, the therapeutic methods they developed necessarily reflected their own emotional dynamics. Drawing on the most important research in clinical, social, and personality psychology, the authors reveal the pervasive influence of emotional organization in the lives of these individuals. Having presented a new approach to personology, autobiography, autobiography, narrative studies, psychotherapy and the theory of emotions on its publication in 2002, this book is essential reading.
Preface
Part I. Introduction
1. Challenging the prevailing view
2. Affect, human development, and dynamic systems
Part II. Emotion as the Integrative Link in Social and Personality Development
3. Lives attracted to shame and longing
Rogers
4. Lives repelled by fear and distress
Ellis
5. Lives repelled and attracted by contempt and shame
Perls
Part III. Emotion as the Link in Intellectual Work
6. Wisdom and passion
7. Cognitive stages and joy, surprise
Rogers
8. Cartesian logic and anger, fear
Ellis
9. Dialectical logic and excitement, disgust and shame
Perls
Part IV. Emotion as the Link in Therapeutic Behavior
10. Postures and climate in dyadic interaction
Part V. Presenting a New View
11. Summarizing the emotional links
12. Lives and change
emotional energy in linear, complex, and chaotic personality systems.
"Ambitious, textured, and elegant... This book is a tour de force demonstration of how one can indeed carry out a study of the whole person in all his or her complexity. Highly recommended." Choice