BEYOND THE FACT THAT hysterics ignore their histories while obsessives glorify theirs, the two major character types pose quite different considerations for biographical inquiry. I will describe how the psychologies of such patients, varying in cognitive structure, ego function and defense, experience and use of affect, and style of interpersonal relations, influence biographical reassessment and raise interesting issues for how we go about our analytic work.

But considering the difficulties and implications of psychoanalytic reconstruction in our present conceptual atmosphere seems a conspicuously risky undertaking. When Freud realized that the mind of the child determined the life of the adult, he directed us to search for our psychic roots. Once the storms of resistant Victorian protest abated and the infantile origins of character and personality