The Biological Basis of Personality

Before this foundational work, Eysenck had initially constructed a model of personality in such works as Dimensions of Personality and The Experimental Study of Personality, but these were primarily descriptive in nature. A second phase of research included his Dynamics of Anxiety and Hysteria and Experiments with Drugs, where he provided causal analysis by reference to concepts then current in experimental psychology. The Biological Basis of Personality represents Eysenck''s third phase, when he dug deeper to find biological causes underlying the psychological concepts of emotion, excitation, and inhibition--which had formed the building blocks of his earlier efforts. In this work, the causal links he postulates between personality variables and neurological and physiological discoveries establish a realistic model that takes theory out of the field of mere speculation.

As Sybil Eysenck makes clear in her new preface, this book paved the way for a "marriage" of the experimental and individual difference approach in personality psychology.

As Sybil Eysenck makes clear in her new preface, this book paved the way for a "marriage" of the experimental and individual difference approach in personality psychology.