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"(E)nduring patterns of perceiving, relating to, and thinking about the environment and oneself that are exhibited in a wide range of social and personal contexts." (p. 686)
Laymen often confuse and confute "personality" with "character" and "temperament".
Our temperament is the biological-genetic template that interacts with our environment.
Our temperament is a set of in-built dispositions we are born with. It is mostly unalterable (though recent studies demonstrate that the brain is far more plastic and elastic than we thought).
In other words, our temperament is our nature.
Our character is largely the outcome of the process of socialization, the acts and imprints of our environment and nurture on our psyche during the formative years (0-6 years and in adolescence).
Our character is the set of all acquired characteristics we posses, often judged in a cultural-social context.
Sometimes the interplay of all these factors results in an abnormal personality.
AUTHOR BIO Sam Vaknin (
samvak.tripod.com ) is the author of Malignant Self Love - Narcissism
Revisited and After the Rain - How the West Lost the East. He served as a
columnist for Global Politician, Central Europe Review, PopMatters, Bellaonline,
and eBookWeb, a United Press International (UPI) Senior Business Correspondent,
and the editor of mental health and Central East Europe categories in The Open
Directory and Suite101. Until recently, he served as the Economic Advisor to the
Government of Macedonia. Visit Sam's Web site at
samvak.tripod.com
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