[...]... substituting more adaptive behaviors (Livesley, 1999, 2001) Increasing Tolerance and Acceptance The basic premise of this strategy is that behavior is relatively fixed and individuals need to learn to accept their major behavioral characteristics and use them adaptively Many patients express extreme dissatisfaction and distress about their personal qualities They attack themselves for having certain characteristics,... genetics and other medical specialties Their approach is to work from the bottom up: They take the fundamental unit of analysis to be the gene and its variants Frustratingly, successes have been few and far between All is not lost, because a great deal of what behavioral geneticists do is to study the effects of these as-yet-to-be identified genes They take a top down approach that begins with recognized... the therapist The first is helping patients understand the core behaviors that define their psychopathology and the factors that lead to the development of these characteristics The second is helping patients to identify adaptive features of their behavior Many common behavioral extremes probably emerged during the course of evolution because they conferred some kind of adaptive advantage, but in the. .. provides the basis for an estimate of h2B because any measured similarity can only be based on genetic similarity (parents and offspring share 50% of the same genetic material on average) Environmental factors cannot contribute to the similarity of the adopted children and their biological parents because members of an unrelated family raised the children In this design, estimates of h2B are compromised... across studies regardless of a scale's response format Are Behavioral Geneticists Eugenicists? Perhaps some of the resistance to behavioral genetics stems from the field's apparent association with the eugenics movement and the spectre of selective breeding of humans for desirable traits The association began with the publication of Arthur Jensen's 1969 article in the Harvard Educational Review, in which... will is alive and well, and probably genetic" (p 314) Behavioral geneticists have never taken the extreme position that heritability equals inevitability and they actively research the role of environmental factors Among behavioral geneticists, there is simply no debate and the research is not driven by ideology! GENETICAL PSYCHOTHERAPY Behavioral genetics examines the effect of genes at the level of populations... liability model of disease sidered clinically abnormal (Area C), but is not quite typical enough to be considered normal, that is, fitting the criteria for inclusion in Area A The breadth of Areas A, B, and C is defined by the clinician or researcher and need not be symmetrical around the arithmetical average For example, the point or threshold that differentiates normal from abnormal behavior can... people in Area C, with all falling in Areas A and B At best, a study based on this population would not be estimating the heritability of a disorder per se, but the heritability of a spectrum condition CRITICISMS OF BEHAVIORAL GENETICS Over the years, a number of objections to behavioral genetic research have been raised, which have no doubt contributed to its apparent lack of impact in clinical circles... behavior can be changed SUMMARY Behavioral genetics research has explored the impact of genes and the environment on disorder Its results have a direct bearing on our understanding of what psychopathology is and in turn influence our understanding of therapeutic change and the goals of therapy The next chapter reviews the methods used by behavioral geneticists to estimate genetic and environmental... fair to characterize these concerns as very much yesterday's news Behavioral geneticists have addressed them and a large body of relevant research was summarized in Boomsma et al., (1997), an article that, incidentally, predates Kamin and Goldberger's critique by 5 years but was not cited by them However, the fact that the criticisms continue to be repeated indicates that behavioral geneticists have .