Is Our Self Related to Personality? A Neuropsychodynamic Model
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience October 4, 2018 Andrea Scalabrini, Clara Mucci, Georg Northoff 58 citations
A multilayered model of the self links four layers—relational alignment, self-constitution, self-manifestation, and self-expansion—to distinct neural correlates and levels of personality organization. The model proposes that psychotic, borderline, and neurotic personality organizations correspond respectively to disruptions in self-constitution, self-manifestation, and self-expansion. Grounded in empirical data on neural correlates of the self, early attachment experiences, and resting-state brain activity (rest-self overlap/containment), the model integrates psychodynamic and neuroscientific perspectives. The spontaneous activity of the brain, intrinsically related to the self, may be key to understanding how the default state navigates internal and external reality.