C. Robert Cloninger

Cloninger was born in Beaumont, Texas in 1944. His father Morris Cloninger was a former English teacher and businessman, and his mother Concetta was a former actress who directed the local community theater. In addition to pre-medical studies, he studied philosophy, cultural anthropology, and psychology for which he received honors. Cloninger wanted to understand why antisocial personality disorder, substance dependence, and somatization disorder were so often found together in the same individual and in the same family. This question led to longitudinal studies of people with each of these disorders and then family and adoption studies. In order to better quantify and test hypotheses about the inheritance of psychiatric disorders, he studied quantitative genetics with Theodore Reich in St. Louis and with Newton Morton and D.C. Rao of the Population Genetics Lab of the University of Hawaii. During the late 70s, Cloninger worked on modeling complex patterns of inheritance using path analysis to allow for both genetic and cultural inheritance. He extended path analysis with the introduction of the "copath" to facilitate the analysis of assortative mating and cultural inheritance. He worked to develop methods for disentangling genetic, cultural, and other environmental influences on mental disorders until he concluded that such statistical modeling would never convince skeptics or provide precise estimates when biological parents also reared their own children. His clinical studies of psychiatric disorders also revealed much complexity in the clinical features of mental disorders: people often had multiple overlapping syndromes and changed over time in unpredictable ways. As a result, he shifted his efforts after 1980 to more compelling experimental designs, such as adoption and linkage studies. ==Work==

Stockholm adoption study The answer to the need for better data about separation experiments came in the form of a long-term collaboration between Cloninger and Michael Bohman, the head of child psychiatry at the University of Umea in Sweden. Bohman had read some of Cloninger's papers on the analysis of separation experiments and asked for Cloninger's assistance in his own research. For several years, Bohman had been studying the behavior of a large birth cohort of children born in Stockholm. The children had been separated from their biological parents at birth and reared in adopted homes. Cloninger proposed that the differences between these two groups of people were explained by personality traits that were observable in childhood, long before any exposure to alcohol. Overall, these adoption studies provided strong evidence for the contribution of both genetic and environmental influences on vulnerability to alcoholism, somatization, criminality, anxiety, and depressive disorders. Without this research the general public would have never known that both genetic and environmental factors play a role in these conditions. He focused on the structure of learning abilities within the person, as has long been desired by social-cognitive psychologists. 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. Initially he described three dimensions of temperament that he suggested were independently inherited: harm avoidance (anxious, pessimistic vs. outgoing, optimistic), novelty seeking (impulsive, quick-tempered vs. rigid, slow-tempered) and reward dependence (warm, approval-seeking vs. cold, aloof). 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". 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. 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. By contrast, the temperament dimensions have strong relations with the older cortico-striatal and limbic systems that regulate habits and skills. These three character dimensions have been found to be as heritable as the four temperament dimensions, each with about 50% heritability in twin studies. All seven dimensions of temperament and character have been found to have unique genetic determinants The construction of the inventories on the basis of genetic and neurobiological considerations challenges the traditional statistical assumptions of factor analytically derived inventories, which have been targeted by social and cognitive psychologists for many years. Tobacco Testimony Cloninger was an expert witness for several tobacco companies during the 1990s. He testified that, by his definition, smoking was not addictive. Self-transcendence Self-transcendence refers to the interest people have in searching for something elevated, something beyond their individual existence. 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", which is different from intellectual adherence to particular religious dogmas or rituals. 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." The Know Yourself series is intended for use as well-being coaching or as an adjunct in psychotherapy. 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: Working in the service of others, thereby increasing love and cooperativeness; letting go of fighting and worrying, thereby increasing hope and self-directedness; and growing in awareness, thereby increasing faith and Self-Transcendence. 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. Cloninger is working with the World Psychiatric Association and the International College of Person-centered Medicine to advance a more integrated approach to mental health and well-being. ==Honors and awards==

Selected honors and awards • 2014 Oscar Pfister Award from American Psychiatric Association and Association of Professional Chaplains • 2012 Honorary Doctor of Philosophy (PhD h.c.), Psychology and Social Sciences Faculty, University of Gothenburg, Sweden • 1989 Institute of Medicine, National Academy of Sciences, USA • 1988 Edward A. Strecker Award, Institute of Pennsylvania Hospital • 1983 Honorary Doctor of Medicine (M.D. hc), University of Umea, Sweden ==Selected publications==

Books • Cloninger, C. R. (2004). Feeling Good: The Science of Well-Being. New York: Oxford University Press. (Italian translation with foreword by Mario Maj, Rome, CIC Edizioni Internationali, 2006). • Hallett M., Fahn S., Jankovic J.J., Lang A.E., Cloninger C.R., Yudofsky S.C. (Eds.) (2005). Psychogenic Movement Disorders: Neurology and Neuropsychiatry. Philadelphia: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins. • Cloninger, C. R., (Ed.) (1999). Personality and Psychopathology. Washington, D.C.: American Psychiatric Press. • Cloninger C.R., Przybeck T.R., Svrakic D.M., Wetzel R.D., Richter J., Eisemann M., Richter G. (1999). Das Temperament und Charakter Inventar (TCI) Manual. Frankfurt: Swets Test Services. • Gershon E.S. and Cloninger C.R. (Eds.) (1994). Genetic Approaches in Mental Disorders. Washington, D.C.: American Psychiatric Press. • Cloninger C.R., Przybeck T.R., Svrakic D.M., Wetzel R.D. (1994). The Temperament and Character Inventory (TCI): A Guide to Its Development and Use. St. Louis: Washington University Center for Psychobiology of Personality. • Cloninger C.R. and Begleiter H. (Eds.) (1991). Genetics and Biology of Alcoholism. Banbury Reports 33. Plainview, N.Y.: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press. • Maser J.D. and Cloninger C.R. (Eds.) (1990). Comorbidity in Anxiety and Mood Disorders. Washington, D.C., American Psychiatric Press. Selected articles • Cloninger, C. R. (2013) What makes people healthy, happy, and fulfilled in the face of current world challenges? Mens Sana Monographs, 11(1), 16–24. • Cloninger, C. R., Zohar, A. H., Hirschmann, S., Dahan, D. (2012) The psychological costs and benefits of being highly persistent: personality profiles distinguish mood disorders from anxiety disorders. J Affective Disorder, 136(3), 758–66. • Cloninger, C. R., Zohar, A. H. (2011) Personality and the perception of health and happiness. J Affective Disorders, 128(1-2), 24–32. • Cloninger, C. R. (2009). On Well-Being: Current Research Trends And Future Directions. Editorial. Mens Sana Monographs, 6(1), 3–9. • Sullivan, S., Cloninger, C.R., Przybeck, T.R., Klein, S. (2007). Personality characteristics in obesity and relationship with successful weight loss. Int J Obes (Lond.), 31, 667–674. • Cloninger, C. R. (2006). The science of well-being: An integrated approach to mental health and its disorders. World Psychiatry, 5, 71–76. • Cloninger, C. R., Svrakic, D.M., Przybeck, T.R. (2006) Can personality assessment predict future depression? A twelve-month follow-up of 631 subjects. J Affective Disorder, 92 (1), 35–44. • Hansenne, M., Delhez, M., Cloninger, C.R. (2005). Psychometric properties of the Temperament and Character Inventory-Revised in a Belgian sample. J Person Assess, 85, 40–49. • Grucza, R.A., Przybeck, T.R., Cloninger, C.R. (2005). Personality as a mediator of demographic risk factors for suicide attempts in a community sample. Comprehensive Psychiatry, 46, 214–222. • Gillespie, N.A., Cloninger, C.R., Heath, A.C., Martin, N.G. (2003). The genetic and environmental relationship between Cloninger's dimensions of temperament and character. Personality and Individual Differences, 35, 1931–1946. • Cloninger, C. R. (2003). Completing the psychobiological architecture of human personality development: Temperament, Character, & Coherence. In U. M. Staudinger & U. E. R. Lindenberger (Eds.), Understanding human development: Dialogues with lifespan psychology (pp. 159–182). Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers. • Cloninger, C. R. (2002). The discovery of susceptibility genes for mental disorders. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, 99(21), 13365–13367. • Cloninger, C. R. (2000). Biology of personality dimensions. Current Opinions in Psychiatry, 13, 611–616. • Cloninger, C. R. (1999). A new conceptual paradigm from genetics and psychobiology for the science of mental health. Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry, 33, 174–186. • Cloninger, C. R., Svrakic, N. M., & Svrakic, D. M. (1997). Role of personality self-organization in development of mental order and disorder. Development and Psychopathology, 9, 881–906. • Cloninger, C. R. (1994). The genetic structure of personality and learning: a phylogenetic perspective. Clinical Genetics, 46, 124–137. • Cloninger, C. R., Svrakic, D. M., & Przybeck, T. R. (1993). A psychobiological model of temperament and character. Archives of General Psychiatry, 50, 975–990. • Cloninger, C. R., Przybeck, T. R., & Svrakic, D. M. (1991). The tridimensional personality questionnaire: U.S. normative data. Psychological Reports, 69, 1047–1057. ==See also==