The Temperament and Character Inventory (TCI) is an instrument for personality assessment that was developed by C. Robert Cloninger to provide a comprehensive biopsychosocial model of personality as it develops within individuals (Cloninger et al. 1993). It deconstructs personality into seven dimensions that vary widely in the general population, rather than focusing only on pathology or abnormal traits (Cloninger 2004). Nevertheless, it was designed to be equally applicable to clinical populations without being stigmatizing or pathologizing. The TCI is based on a biopsychosocial model of complex interactions among genetic, psychological, social, cultural, and spiritual constructs, rather than assuming that personality can be decomposed into independent dimensions (Cloninger and Cloninger 2011; Cloninger and Garcia 2015). The four dimensions of temperament and three dimensions of character measured by the TCI are summarized in Fig. 1.
