Main description:

In the World Library of Psychologists series, international experts present career-long collections of what they judge to be their finest pieces - extracts from books, key articles, salient research findings, and their major practical theoretical contributions.

In this fascinating collection, Professor Gordon Claridge charts the development of a model of mental health that blurs the line between madness and sanity, conditions such as schizophrenia and other forms of psychosis seen as dimensions of 'normal' personality and temperament rather than separate abnormalities. Working with, and influenced by, the late Hans Eysenck, Claridge is celebrated for evolving research on personality and psychological disorders into a revised view of the spectrum of psychotic traits. The concept of schizotypy, re-evaluated by Claridge, sees mental illness not as a pathology suffered by a few, but as the end of a continuum experienced by us all. Psychopathology and Personality Dimensions brings together some of the author's most influential publications on the topics of schizotypy and psychoticism, personality disorders, and the use of drug techniques to investigate normal and abnormal individual differences.

Interspersed throughout with specially-written retrospectives by Professor Claridge, looking back at his work and contextualising where it sits in the wider literature, the collection illustrates a radical and influential model of mental illness that continues to resonate today. This book is an essential resource for all those engaged or interested in the field of personality and psychological disorders.

Contents:

1 Hans Eysenck's contribution to our understanding of personality and psychological disorder: a personal view.

2 The relationship between incentive, personality type and improvement in performance of imbeciles.

3 Sedation threshold, personality, and the theory of neurosis.

4 Why drug effects vary.

5 The relative influence of weight and of "nervous type" on the tolerance of amylobarbitone sodium..

6 Animal models of schizophrenia: the case for LSD-25.

7 Covariation between two-flash threshold and skin conductance level in first-breakdown schizophrenics: relationships in drug-free patients and the effects of treatment.

8 LSD: a missed opportunity?

9 The schizophrenias as nervous types.

10 Theoretical background and issues.

11 The factor structure of 'schizotypal' traits: a large replication study.

12 The Oxford-Liverpool Inventory of Feelings and Experiences (O-LIFE): further description and extended norms.

13 Schizophrenia risk and handedness: a mixed picture.

14 Creativity: a healthy side of madness.

15 Psychotic traits in comedians.

16 Old thoughts: new ideas: future directions.