In work and in life, know thyself is Chris White’s mantra.

White is the author of the recently published  Working With the Emotional Investor. Financial Psychology For Wealth Managers. A CFA for more than 25 years, White is a senior portfolio manager at Hemenway Trust Company LLC, a New Hampshire-chartered wealth management firm.

Based in Boston, White advises high-net-worth individuals, couples, families and institutions on retirement planning, building investment portfolios and  multi-generational wealth management.

It was only after White, 66, examined traumas and relationships from his early life that he understood how profoundly his behavior had been affected by his painful past. His wealthy father had been “a cold, distant, and emotionally unavailable man;” his “cold and aloof” mother had curtly fired the adult who gave the young White emotional warmth and acceptance -- his governess.

“This early and painful loss of ‘perfect love’ affirmed in my young psyche the importance of relationships, stability, stewardship, love and connection with others, and helped form the basis of the person I am today.”

White has crafted what he says is a radical approach to wealth management. Chapters of his book are devoted to “Understanding a Person’s Emotional Template,” “The Psychology of Money and the Emotions of Investing,” “Understanding Your Client’s Engagement Style” and “Nurturing Client Relationships for the Long Term.”

“Our profession has come late to acknowledging this whole area of emotions in working with individuals. But in my experience, it is the glue that holds the relationships together, what makes it interesting and turns it into a higher calling,” White said by telephone from Boston.

White says his approach is radical because he goes beyond what many advisors acknowledge: that investing is emotional. “My book goes deeply into the emotional component of investor behavior by identifying three investor types, shows how these types behave in low-stakes and, more importantly, high-stakes situations and discusses how investing is often done in high-stakes situations since it involves the commitment of our own personal capital,” White said.

The three investor types he identifies are the Protector, people who, like White, strive to protect the best interests of others; the Survivor, whose childhood losses inspire them to zealously safeguard financial security; and the Fixer, who seeks control and to exert power over all phases of life.

White’s influences in identifying these types include the studies and research of social psychologists such as Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky (Nobel Prize-winners for their work in behavior and finance); Jason Zweig, author of Your Money and Your Brain; Richard J. Davidson, author (with Sharon Begley) of The Emotional Life of the Brain, and especially, of Cambridge, Mass., psychologist and consultant David Kantor.

Kantor, founder of the Kantor Institute, Cambridge, and creator of the Four Player Model, is a clinical psychologist and author who has taught at Harvard University and Tufts University. From Kantor’s personality models, White learned a basis for understanding human behavior -- that the human personality (emotional template) is formed from childhood experience.

“I have worked with David Kantor quite a bit, and it was David who suggested I combine my work with him and my investment counseling to write a book,” White said. (White said that the opinions he is expressing “are solely mine and not those of Hemenway Trust Company.”)

Before financial planning is discussed between White and a new client, he has gleaned enough information from the client -- likes and dislikes, biographical data, attitude toward money, even body language -- to establish their personality type.

“I don’t try to play the role of shrink. My job is to listen on different levels. Childhood stories will often be volunteered and that will be an opportunity. The door opens up for the advisor to inquire gently “What happened  there, how does that affect your view of wealth?’ You can easily tap into some very strong emotional stuff,” White said.

He shows in numerous examples, fictionalized to protect privacy, that knowing clients personality types helps a wealth advisor to keep counseling productive and avoid disagreements and emotionally charged decisions.

White says the wealth generator in a family tends to be a Fixer, and that the children of a Fixer tend to have great difficulty standing up to the Fixer. “They get steamrollered; they become Protector and Survivor. Think of the Rockefellers’ first generation: clearly a Fixer, striving for money no matter what. Questioning the morality of what he has done, of winning at all costs, is very difficult for the children,” White said.

To avoid the steamroller effect, he has had to navigate between Fixer personalities, most often men, and their spouses, children and/or siblings.

In one example, the husband of a couple in their 60s with a portfolio of $12 million, 80 percent of it from the wife’s trusts and gifts, pushed White to increase their equity holdings from 80 percent to 90 percent. The husband insisted that being less aggressive had cost the couple $2 million in assets. The wife’s investment thinking was more reserved; she preferred the slow and steady approach that made her family wealthy; this caused tension between the couple.

White tempered the husband’s “emotional exuberance” and “gives him a dose of reality” by discussing price-earnings ratios, price-to book and dividend yield matters, the reliability of 12-month economic forecasts, as well as market corrections, and “the herding instinct” encouraged by TV analysts and bloggers. The husband agreed that revisiting the equity weight of their portfolio could wait for another day.

The steamroller effect on women is an important cause for concern: Because they feel their opinions and needs have been ignored, as many as 70% of women fire their financial advisors after being widowed. “The numbers are scary! I wonder if the male, who may be the Fixer personality type, is usually in charge in such settings and it is difficult to engineer the sharing of responsibilities between husband and wife,” White said.

He has advised women who depended on their husbands for all financial decisions to “step up and take control,” especially when faced with a husband’s illness and impending widowhood. He continues to advise these women after their husband’s death.

Meetings can be exhaustive and long and White says his approach demands listening more than talking. Although he meets with clients alone, Hemenway Trust uses the team approach in servicing clients, so he often consults colleagues about how to deal with difficult financial, legal and emotional issues.

“It’s an all-consuming job; it is 24/7. I will get calls at all hours of the day, even after hours,” White says. “The only times that I am truly divorced from client work is when I am sailing offshore 100 miles. Emotions know no schedule!”

White says he sees acceptance of his approach among older advisors. “People who have gone through decades of working with individuals begin to say, ‘Oh, I recognize that type, and that makes sense to me.’ The new guys on the block haven’t had that experience or that full a background to connect the stories to their work, yet,” White said.

Working With the Emotional Investor. Financial Psychology for Wealth Managers by Chris White with Richard Koonce. Praeger.  $37.00.

Eleanor O’Sullivan is an award-winning freelance journalist who writes for Financial Advisor magazine.