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Christopher Bollas is an American, a former professor of English who trained at the British Psychoanalytical Society and became a key figure in their Independent Group. He became known in the United States through his previous works, Shadow of the Object and Forces of Destiny. In these publications, he reconfigured psychoanalytic commonplaces and breathed new life into tired assumptions. He continues in this mode of shifting the reader's perspective in Being a Character.
Judging from the title, I expected this book to be about character structure, perhaps character pathology. I was wrong. The character of the title is the literary character. Bollas tries to show how our lives are like those of characters in novels and how we create our lives through processes akin to dreaming. This sounds far afield in the abstract. As it evolves in this account it becomes not only plausible but captivating. We reconsider ourselves and our patients as Bollas applies unconscious processes to self-experience.
The book is divided into two sections. The first part attempts to describe who and what we are and how we come to be that way. Make no mistake—;this is not dry mechanical theory. It is a highly evocative, poetic discourse on “how we consecrate