In The Self in the Family, Luciano L'Abate and Margaret Baggett again break new ground by expanding the L'Abate theory of personality development to encompass criminal and psychopathological behavior. Drawing upon mounting empirical evidence that the family paradigm is the major determinant of personality socialization throughout the life span, the authors develop a selfhood model with demonstrable links between the three domains of personality function, criminality, and psychopathology.

With the help of the model, they show how it is now possible to arrive at a personality-based interpretation of most deviant behaviors, including criminality, psychopathology, addictions, and even psychosomatic illnesses, and they describe various preventive and psychotherapeutic applications for this expanded theory of family-based personality development.

Offering an empirically rigorous, developmentally based, unified field theory of personality function, criminality, and psychopathology, The Self in the Family is essential reading for developmental and clinical psychologists, family therapists, personality theorists, and criminality and psychopathology researchers.