Nature's Thumbprint: The New Genetics of Personality

Edy KizakiI couldn't believe that only one person had reviewed this very valuable book, so although it's been too long since I read it, I had to just weigh in... a must-read. I have been telling stories from this book in conversation in the years since I read it, like the one about the twins, separated at birth, who both washed their hands in the same way, scrubbing them until they actually turned red. When asked why, one said his adopted mother was a neatnik so she taught him to wash his hands well. The other explained that since his adoptive mother was a slob, he rebelled by cleaning his hands extra well. What was apparent was that the explanation came after the fact; actually they were born with the proclivity to wash their hands in a certain way. Not only did this cast a light on how our personality is genetically influenced, but also on they way people explain things without the actual connection to reality! Full of insight and changes the way one understands oneself and others.

This book contains information from Dr. Neubar's twin studies. When a particular Jewish adoption agency received twins (or triplets), he had them separated and specifically adopted to parents at different economic levels (blue collar, white collar, upper class). Then he studied the effects of their environment on their development without the adoptive parents or the children knowing. Neither the parents nor the children knew they had identical siblings.When this information became public in the early 1980s, some compared it too similar experiments by the Nazis. Dr. Neubar feared a major public backlash so he never published the study. It is sealed at the Yale Library until the year 2065.However, this book contains insights he gleaned from that study.

The beginning of the book was much more interesting than the end. In the beginning, they write about specific cases from their twin studies. Everything else was information you can read in any other book about behavioral studies.

Genes determine our eye color, blood type, and tendency toward certain diseases. That much is clear. But when it comes to our psychological traits-who we are and what we can become-few people would credit genes with a major role in human development. For most of this century, we have considered parents and the general environment to be the primary sculptors of personality, and have bestowed on them all the credit for our triumphs and the blame for our failures.Now, in a book that will change forever the way we think about ourselves and our children, Peter B. Neubauer, M.D., Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at New York University, and his son Alexander Neubauer, right the balance in the nature-nurture debate. They show how our genes affect the way we react to the world, interact with it, and behave in many situations. The authors delineate the genetic roots of our personalities, even as they remain faithful to Freudian psychology.Based on Peter Neubauer's fifty years of clinical practice as a psychoanalyst and researcher, and on studies of identical twins, Nature's Thumbprint explores the range of inborn inclinations upon which personality is later built: individual timetables of maturation; adaptation to the family and the environment; reasons why some children are more vulnerable to environmental obstacles than others; and why some parents are stymied by children who do not match their expectations, while others respond in positive ways. Sure to redefine thinking in psychiatry, psychology, and psychotherapy, Nature's Thumbprint will also give parents a new understanding of their children. It offers a hopeful message to us all, for only when we understand the biological as well as the psychological underpinnings of personality can we come to a genuine understanding of ourselves and our lives.

Suuuuper interesting! If you feel like going down the rabbit hole of the hidden twin studies, this is some of the only info from the infamous man himself