Part I

CONCEPTUAL ISSUES

INTRODUCTION TO PART I

The following six chapters contain a rationale for character diagnosis, a review of some major psychoanalytic theories and their respective contributions to models of personality structure, an exploration of individual differences that have been widely understood as embodying different maturational challenges, commentary on the therapeutic implications of such issues, and an exposition of defenses as they relate to character structure. Together these chapters provide a way of thinking about the consistencies in an individual that we think of as his or her personality.

This section culminates in the representation of diagnostic possibilities along a biaxial grid. Although this schema, like any attempt to generalize, is both arbitrary and oversimplified, I have found it useful in introducing therapists to central dynamic formulations and their clinical value. I believe that this way of construing personality is implicit in much of the psychoanalytic literature. Occasionally, a similar formulation has been explicit (e.g., M. H. Stone, 1980, who also included an axis for genetic tendencies). Other analysts have provided other visual representations of diagnostic possibilities (e.g., Blanck & Blanck, 1974, pp. 114–117; Greenspan, 1981, pp. 234–237; Horner, 1990, p. 23; Kernberg, 1984, p. 29; Kohut, 1971, p. 9).

Especially in the past two decades, researchers studying infants, patterns of relationship, trauma, and neuroscience have inspired new ways of thinking about personality differences. My diagram can incorporate many of their findings, but some conceptualizations emerging from contemporary empirical studies represent significantly different angles of vision. My aim is not to dispute other organizations of developmental, structural, and temperamental concepts but to offer a synthesized and streamlined image for newcomers to this confusing field.