This section briefly explains:

1. How I believe childhood experience produces personality.

2. How to undo the problems caused by childhood experience,

3. A few new terms.

I propose the following:

Imprinted parents and baseline emotions

In the first 6-8 months of life, babies permanently imprint the faces of people they look at a lot. Imprinting is a biological process, similar to what happens in baby animals like geese. I refer to people whose faces are imprinted in the child as imprinted parents, although they can be any caregiver. 

Interactions with imprinted parents are special. Fear and some other emotions (which I'll describe in detail in other sections) evoked in the child during interactions with imprinted parents become permanent (i.e. constantly active) and overly sensitized (i.e. easily triggered).

For example, children who are punished by an imprinted parent experience fear. As a result, those children feel some level of fear all the time. Additionally, their fear responses become overly sensitized—they are likely to over-interpret their environment as threatening and react with a fear response that is out of proportion to any actual threat.

I refer to emotions acquired from interactions with imprinted parents as baseline emotions—permanent, sensitized emotions that remain active throughout adult life.

While most childhood experiences evoke emotions, only interactions with imprinted parents produce permanent, baseline emotions.

Humans have widely varying mixes of baseline emotions due to their wide range of childhood experiences with their imprinted parents. 

Baseline emotions are mostly perceived as normal. People have very little awareness of their baseline emotions, although they may be aware of some of their effects—such as discomfort in social situations, depressed mood, or being overly talkative.

Baseline emotions do not significantly change during adulthood.

Beliefs

Children remember their experiences, especially ones that evoke significant emotion. Their brain synthesizes these experiences into a world view. I call this world view their beliefs.

Putting it together

These two factors—baseline emotions and beliefs—determine almost every important personality trait.

Here are some examples

Psychiatric disorders

1. Psychiatric disorders are defined by groups of symptoms that last a specified length of time.

2. Psychiatric symptoms are:

    * Emotional, such as feeling depressed or anxious,

    * Physical, such as low energy or sleep problems, or

    * Mental, such as the thought that people “hate me.”

3. Psychiatric symptoms are commonly found in people who have no psychiatric disorder. For example, many people intermittently experience sleep, energy, and anxiety problems, blue moods, and negative self thoughts.

4. Emotion can cause all of the emotional and physical symptoms found in psychiatric disorders (this is detailed on the Emotion page).

5. Beliefs acquired during childhood can cause all of the mental symptoms found in psychiatric disorders.

If relevant beliefs are present and either baseline emotions are strong enough or triggered baseline emotions last long enough, the associated symptoms may meet the requirements for a psychiatric disorder. Thus, all psychiatric symptoms can be caused by a combination of baseline emotions and beliefs.

Behavioral problems

Children whose baseline emotions include sensitized anger responses are likely to have behavioral problems as an adult.

Medical problems

Almost every emotion affects most of the body's organs (this is detailed on the Emotion page). Since baseline emotions are constant, they put continuous stress on the body. A person's specific mix of baseline emotions determines the stress level on different parts of the body and, consequently, their susceptibility to various medical problems.

Intelligence

Emotion affects a person's ability to think and learn. Because people think most clearly when they are calm, baseline emotions—most of which involve some form of tension or distress—tend to reduce a person's ability to think and learn. Consequently, a person's specific mix of baseline emotions determines their intelligence level.

The restorative process (Explained in detail on The Change Process page)

Looking at and talking to pictures of imprinted parents evokes baseline emotions. With repeated exposure, the intensity of those emotions gradually decreases*. As it decreases, related beliefs change to reflect a more realistic view of the world.

*This is exposure therapy, one of the most effective therapy techniques currently known.