Page 21 - Advanced Biblical Counseling Student Textbook

For example, if Steven was always smiling and happy, adults would react positively to him, reinforcing
more smiling and happy behavior.

We could spend an entire course just studying personality paradigms, but let’s evaluate the biological
approach. What makes sense and what seems left out? The first piece of evidence for the biological
paradigm is there are clear connections between the physiology of the brain and personality traits.
Professors Shields and Bredfeldt (2001) share the following story that is well known in the world of
psychology:

“In September 1848, (in the state of Vermont in the United States) Phineas P. Gage, a twenty-five-year-
old railroad foreman, was using explosives to clear the way for a new track. In preparation for blasting
he was packing an explosive charge into a drill hole with a thirteen-pound, three-and-a-half-foot-long
tamping rod. An accidental spark ignited
the chare prematurely, sending the rod
through his left cheek and out the vault
of his skull. It landed more than thirty
yards away. Gage survived the
experience but faced several weeks of
infection, fever, and semi consciousness.
His condition became so poor that a
coffin was prepared for him. But in the
fifth week his condition improved. Gage
regained consciousness but was blind in
the left eye. What made this case
noteworthy was not Gage’s survival, however; it was the change in Gage’s behavior due to the brain
damage that occurred. (photo from doctorsimpossible.com)

Before the incident, Gage was well liked by friends and was considered to be honest, trustworthy,
hardworking, and dependable. When that tamping rod plowed through Gage’s skull, it took a part of his
brain tissue with it and, in the process, something of Gage’s former self. After the accident Gage’s
doctor described him as ‘fitful, irreverent, indulging at times in the grossest profanity (which was not
previously his custom), manifesting but little deference for his fellows, impatient. . . A child in his
intellectual capacity and manifestations. His mind was radically changed, so decidedly that his friends
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and acquaintances said he was ‘no longer Gage’”

Think about people you know in your community or those you knew when you were a child. Do you
remember people who had brain damage, maybe after an accident? Or elderly people who had diseases
impacting their brains? “Brain damage changes people by changing their abilities and their personalities.
There is an intimate connection between the health of our brains and the health of our personalities.
We often take it for granted that personality is indelible and unchanging, but that is incorrect. Although
personality is stable, it is affected by the state and health of those two handfuls of grayish matter called
the brain. Neurochemical transmitters, synapse connections, dendrites, and axons are all terms that
now are used to describe the growing understanding of the brain-mind-personality relationship”.
25

24 Ibid, p. 158-159.
25 Ibid, p. 159.

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