Anxiety and personality

Abstract

Abstract ‘Anxiety and personality’ links the anxiolytic-derived state neuropsychology of the previous chapters to personality traits. Traits are seen as sensitivities of structures, goal control systems, and more global modulators of the systems. It lays the ground work for seeing psychiatric disorders as resulting from one or more extreme sensitivities. While the main focus is anxiety, it also discusses the implications of the neuropsychology for Reinforcement Sensitivity Theory (RST) with additional comment on the Big 5. It reviews issues arising from word meanings, evolution, the need for biomarkers, hierarchical organization, continuity versus discontinuity of disorders and provides recommendation for the application of neuropsychology to personality work, throughout. It distinguishes neuroticism from trait anxiety, provides a new dopaminergic neurology for reinforcement sensitivity, strongly distinguishes reinforcement from reinforcers, discusses the first anxiety disorder biomarker, identifies problems with existing RST scales, and discusses future neural solutions.