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The concept of character has always been ill-at-ease in psychoanalytic theory. As an aggregate of traits characteristic of the person, it has been seen as superficial and peripheral to the main concerns of psychoanalysis. The early-instinct versus defense model of psychoanalysis explained character as expressions of or defenses against instinctual pressures. As a result, character has usually been assigned an epiphenomenal role, at most a derivative of ego and superego functions. It has remained an ambiguous notion, poorly defined and rather peripheral to our theories of mind and of therapy. The growing concern with issues of epistemics and cognition, however, has begun to shift this orientation and promises significant reevaluations of the concept of character and its importance both to theory and practice.
This paper will examine the nature and function of character as a structural phenomenon related to the architectonics of knowing. It will extend observations I have made about the central significance of cognition to our understanding of the functioning of mind, the relationship of the concept of character to issues of cognition, and the implications of these views on issues of psychodynamics and therapeutic process.
Psychoanalysis studies what, how, and why the individual knows and does not know. Its theoretical premises include both the fact that early experience effects knowing and meaning, and that subsequent behavior and mental functioning reflect these earlier patterns of meaning. In essence, psychoanalytic therapy may be considered an exercise in personal epistemology, in which the patient's ways of knowing and personal meaning systems are explored and understood in order to correct dysfunctional mental processes and behaviors.
Because of its roots in clinical observation, psychoanalysis, more than the academic psychologies, has recognized the importance of felt and sensate experience on the organization of meaning in a person's life. Yet, like academic psyc