Meyerian psychobiology, personality development, and the role of life experiences.

The psychobiological life history approach to psychiatry is perhaps the most important of Adolf Meyer's contributions to psychiatric thinking. The author outlines the implications of that approach for current concepts and practice. He reviews the literature regarding the causative role of life experiences in the genesis of psychiatric disorder, the extent to which the effects of stressors are situation-specific, the effects of stress on the organism, the reason for individual variations in the response to stress, and the cause of life stressors.