Sounds like manic depression brought on improper PCT, fluctuating test levels or some other cause. Or maybe your just a moody fuck.
or hereditary serotonine levels imbalance... chances are high his fahter/mother had it too.
Temperament and Character Inventory
Observations about personality provided Cloninger a practical way to predict vulnerability to mental disorders. In the mid-1980s, he developed a general model of temperament based on genetic, neurobiological, and neuropharmacological data, rather than using factor analysis of behavior or self-reports as has usually been done by personality psychologists.[12][33] He focused on the structure of learning abilities within the person, as has long been desired by social-cognitive psychologists.[34] To test the adequacy of his structural model, Cloninger compared his model of development within the individual (i.e., ontogeny) to the evolution of learning abilities in animal phylogeny.[35][36] Initially he described three dimensions of temperament that he suggested were independently inherited and measured by his Tridimensional Personality Questionnaire (TPQ):[12][37]
1. Harm Avoidance (anxious, pessimistic vs. outgoing, optimistic)
2. Novelty Seeking (impulsive, quick-tempered vs. rigid, slow-tempered)
3. Reward Dependence (warm, approval-seeking vs. cold, aloof)
Studies quickly showed that Persistence (persevering, ambitious vs. easily discouraged, underachieving) was a fourth independently-inherited temperament dimension with specific brain circuitry, rather than a facet of Reward Dependence.[14][38] These temperament dimensions proved to be a powerful way to distinguish subtypes of personality disorders and vulnerability to a wide range of mental disorders.[39][40] Cloninger was initially criticized for reducing personality to emotional drives. For example, in his book Listening to Prozac, Peter Kramer called the temperament model of personality "a humanist's nightmare."[41]
Likewise, Cloninger and his colleague Dragan Svrakic found that temperament alone did not capture the full range of personality. They found that, by itself, temperament could not reveal whether a person was mature or had a personality disorder.[14] On average, there were differences in the probability of personality disorder in people with different temperament configurations, but every configuration could be found in people who were mentally healthy as well as in people who had personality disorders.[14][42] Consequently, Cloninger identified a second domain of personality variables, using character traits to measure a person's humanistic and transpersonal style:
1. Self-Directedness (reliable, purposeful vs. blaming, aimless)
2. Cooperativeness (tolerant, helpful vs. prejudiced, revengeful)
3. Self-Transcendence (self-forgetful, spiritual vs. self-conscious, materialistic).
These character dimensions measure the components of an individual's mental self-government and can strongly measure the presence and severity of personality disorder.[38] Cloninger often cites Immanuel Kant, who defines character as "what people make of themselves intentionally."[43] Character dimensions have strong relations with recently-evolved regions of the brain—such as the frontal, temporal, and parietal neocortex—that regulate learning of facts and propositions.[14][44][45][46] By contrast, the temperament dimensions have strong relations with the older cortico-striatal and limbic systems that regulate habits and skills.[46][47][48][49]
These three character dimensions have been found to be as heritable as the four temperament dimensions, each with about 50% heritability in twin studies.[50] All seven dimensions of temperament and character have been found to have unique genetic determinants[50] and to be regulated by different brain systems as measured by functional brain imaging.[14][51][45][46][47][52][53] Each dimension is influenced by complex interaction between many genetic and environmental variables, so personality develops as a complex adaptive system.[14] Cloninger's temperament and character inventories have been extensively used in a wide variety of clinical and research purposes, and cited in thousands of peer-reviewed publications.[54] The construction of the inventories on the basis of genetic and neurobiological considerations challenges the traditional statistical assumptions of factor analytically derived inventories,[55] which have been targeted by social and cognitive psychologists for many years.[56] Fortunately, in terms of overall statistical information, there is extensive overlap among the TCI and other multidimensional personality inventories, except that other inventories lack the dimension of Self-Transcendence.[57][58]
[edit] Self-Transcendence & Science of Well-Being
Self-Transcendence refers to the interest people have in searching for something elevated, something beyond their individual existence.[14] According to Cloninger's model, self-transcendence can manifest as an intuitive understanding of elevated aspects of humanity, like compassion, ethics, art, and culture. Others who experience it may also describe an awareness of a divine presence. People scoring high in TCI Self-Transcendence report frequent experiences of boundlessness and inseparability.[14][59][60] They lose awareness of their separateness when absorbed in what they love to do or when appreciating the wonders and mysteries of life. Cloninger observes that such experiences of self-forgetfulness and transpersonal identification correspond to what Freud called "oceanic feelings,"[61] which is different from intellectual adherence to particular religious dogmas or rituals. The TCI Self-Transcendence scale is often used as a measure of spirituality.[45][59][60] Cloninger proposed that the psyche is the aspect of a human being that motivates the search for self-transcendence and underlies the human capacities for self-awareness, creativity, and freedom of will.[14] As suggested by transpersonal psychologists and other psychiatrists like Carl Jung and Viktor Frankl, Cloninger has emphasized that self-transcendence is an essential component in the processes of integration and maturation of personality.[14] He found that when people who score high on all three character traits are compared to others, they have the highest level of well-being, as measured by presence of positive emotions, absence of negative emotions, satisfaction with life, or virtuous conduct.[14] The capacity for love and work have long been recognized as important for well-being, but Cloninger also observed that people need to experience self-transcendence in order to cope well with suffering and to enjoy life's wonders and mysteries fully.
In his book Feeling Good: The Science of Well-Being, Cloninger describes the impetus for his new work:
“ I think it is important that we bring a scientific basis to psychiatry and psychology at a level that goes beyond the level of description. In order for us to advance systematically, as for instance chemistry and physics have done, we need a specific theory of the person and our nature of being. As a result of that I have tried to work out such a systematic model, and have progressed by stages to more and more inclusive theoretical frameworks. The basic position I have now is that we have to see the whole person as more than a collection of disease states: a person is composed of multiple elements of body, mind, and spirit. Each of these has to be carefully defined and measurable, so that we can avoid fantasy and speculation and have testable models....What has become increasingly clear to me is that man has a natural integrative tendency that leads to health, and that disease emerges whenever there is a block. Blocks can come from a genetic predisposition that interferes with natural development, from social learning, or from prior experiences that are unique to the individual.[62] ”
Cloninger has also suggested that not only is there a natural integrative tendency, but that "all human beings have spontaneous needs for happiness, self-understanding and love."[14] He describes practices that improve character development and satisfy these strong basic needs. Just as people can become stronger in the body through physical exercise, he has found they can become mentally and spiritually healthier with mental and spiritual exercises, including certain meditations that enhance mindfulness and spirituality. He describes examples of such exercises[14][15] in detail in a DVD series called Know Yourself, which was developed with the Anthropedia Foundation.[63] The Know Yourself series is intended for use as a self-help tool or as an adjunct in psychotherapy.[64][65]
The mental exercises described by Cloninger are intended to stimulate character development and self-awareness, thereby fostering a healthy way of living with three sets of goals and values:
1. Working in the Service of Others, thereby increasing love and Cooperativeness
2. Letting Go of fighting and worrying, thereby increasing hope and Self-Directedness
3. Growing in Awareness, thereby increasing faith and Self-Transcendence.
Cloninger's approach combines principles of cognitive-behavioral therapy, person-centered therapy, and positive psychology with personality assessment and meditative practices that enhance mindfulness and self-awareness of the cognitive schemas that organize and direct our attention and motivation in different situations.[66] His approach differs from other forms of psychotherapy by its emphasis on integration of a person's awareness of their body, thoughts, and psyche. He suggests that the separation of biomedical, psychosocial, and spiritual approaches interferes with the development of well-being, whereas their integration has been shown to reduce drop-out, relapse, and recurrence rates in randomized controlled trials of well-being therapy.[14][67] Cloninger's integrative approach is intended to synthesize work done in the mental health field, fostering what Juan Mezzich of the World Psychiatric Association has called "psychiatry for the person."[68] Several studies show that psychotherapy, alone or in combination with medications, can help people with mental disorders recover faster and stay well longer, but that a declining number of psychiatrists are providing psychotherapy to their patients.[69] Cloninger is working with the World Psychiatric Association to advance a more integrated approach to mental health and well-being.[15] The American Psychiatric Association has recognized Cloninger for his contributions to better understanding the biopsychosocial basis of mental health and illness with its 2009 Judd Marmor Award.
