The Neuropsychology of Temperament

Abstract

First, a word about “neuropsychology.” This term has commonly been used in a quite restricted sense to delineate that part of psychology which is concerned with the study, in human beings, of the effects of known (even if often poorly known) structural damage to the brain. I use “neuropsychology,” in contrast, in a much wider sense, as in my book, The Neuropsychology of Anxiety (Gray, 1982a), to mean the study, quite generally, of the role played by the brain in behavioral and psychological function, whether in human or animal subjects, and whether there is structural damage to the brain or not. Since I also take it as axiomatic (and few would, I think, disagree with the axiom) that all behavioral and psychological function depends upon the activities of the brain, it follows that “neuropsychology” has a breadth which shadows that of “psychology” itself: if there is a psychology of hunger, intelligence, love, or learning French, then there is ipso facto a neuropsychology of the same.