Sam Restifo
The subject of personality has long been recognized as a central aspect of psychiatry. And yet, despite volumes of research, the field remains lacking in a conceptual framework jointly embraced by researchers and clinicians, the former mostly concerned with dimensional constructs of personality and the latter favouring prototype based systems. This article presents a conceptual framework as the basis for the systematic surveying of personality, whether in an academic or clinical context. It is necessarily theoretical in nature at this initial stage and, as such, modest in scope. It is primarily concerned with articulating an idea: a conceptual framework of personality comprising the five psychological domains of temperament, attachment, world view, mood pattern and coping style, which are familiar to researchers and clinicians alike. The distinctive feature and theoretical coherence of this model is due to the framework following the same sequence of steps as those on the path of personality development in the ordinary course of life.