[1][2][3][4][5] He previously held the Wallace Renard Professorship of Psychiatry, and served as professor of psychology and genetics, as well as director of the Sansone Family Center for Well-Being at Washington University in St.
[6][7][8][9] Cloninger is a member of the evolutionary, neuroscience, and statistical genetics programs of the Division of Biology and Biomedical Sciences at Washington University,[6] and is recognized as an expert clinician in the treatment of general psychopathology, substance dependence, and personality disorders.
[11][12][13][14] He identified and described heritable personality traits predictive of vulnerability to alcoholism and other mental disorders in prospective studies of adoptees reared apart from their biological parents.
[27][28] Cloninger has earned lifetime achievement awards from many academic and medical associations, and is a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences.
[1] He has authored or co-authored nine books and more than four hundred and fifty articles, and is a highly cited psychiatrist and psychologist recognized by the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI).
[37] He worked to develop methods for disentangling genetic, cultural, and other environmental influences on mental disorders until he concluded that such statistical modeling would never convince skeptics or provide precise estimates when biological parents also reared their own children.
The answer to the need for better data about separation experiments came in the form of a long-term collaboration between Cloninger and Michael Bohman, the head of child psychiatry at the University of Umea in Sweden.
[18] He confirmed this by measuring the personality of boys when they were in the fourth grade, about 10 years of age, based on detailed interviews with their teachers and without any knowledge of their drinking status as adults.
[21] The personality model also helped the team to understand other findings they obtained about the inheritance of criminal behavior, somatization (i.e., many physical complaints), anxiety, and depressive disorders.
[42] Overall, these adoption studies provided strong evidence for the contribution of both genetic and environmental influences on vulnerability to alcoholism, somatization, criminality, anxiety, and depressive disorders.
In the mid-1980s, he developed a general model of temperament based on genetic, neurobiological, and neuropharmacological data, rather than using factor analysis of behavior or self-reports as has usually been done by personality psychologists.
[45][46] Initially he described three dimensions of temperament that he suggested were independently inherited: harm avoidance (anxious, pessimistic vs. outgoing, optimistic), novelty seeking (impulsive, quick-tempered vs. rigid, slow-tempered) and reward dependence (warm, approval-seeking vs. cold, aloof).
[21][43] Studies quickly showed that Persistence (persevering, ambitious vs. easily discouraged, underachieving) was a fourth independently inherited temperament dimension with specific brain circuitry, rather than a facet of Reward Dependence.
[50] Character dimensions have strong relations with recently evolved regions of the brain—such as the frontal, temporal, and parietal neocortex—that regulate learning of facts and propositions.
[23] Cloninger's temperament and character inventories have been extensively used in a wide variety of clinical and research purposes, and cited in thousands of peer-reviewed publications.
Cloninger observes that such experiences of self-forgetfulness and transpersonal identification correspond to what Freud called "oceanic feelings",[66] which is different from intellectual adherence to particular religious dogmas or rituals.
[23] As suggested by transpersonal psychologists and other psychiatrists like Carl Jung and Viktor Frankl, Cloninger has emphasized that self-transcendence is an essential component in the processes of integration and maturation of personality.
[23] The capacity for love and work have long been recognized as important for well-being, but Cloninger also observed that people need to experience self-transcendence in order to cope well with suffering and to enjoy life's wonders and mysteries fully.
[23][69] Cloninger's integrative approach is intended to synthesize work done in the mental health field, fostering what Juan Mezzich of the World Psychiatric Association has called "psychiatry for the person".
[71] Cloninger is working with the World Psychiatric Association and the International College of Person-centered Medicine to advance a more integrated approach to mental health and well-being.
[27] The American Psychiatric Association has recognized Cloninger for his contributions to better understanding the biopsychosocial basis of mental health and illness with its 2009 Judd Marmor Award.