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THE CONCEPT OF CHARACTER HOLDS a central position in psychoanalysis. However, each analytic school has different presuppositions about its origins, and how it functions within the individual. These differences in theoretical perspective have important implications for the way treatment is conducted.
Freud (1908) developed a theory of character that was organized around the libidinal strivings of the young child. He postulated that an instinct was transformed through mechanisms such as sublimation, and reaction formation. Because of the transformation, character traits were not easily identified with the instinct that gave rise to them. He hypothicated that a trio of ordinary social traits (being orderly, parsimonious, and obstinate), is the resultant transformation of anal eroticism. This perspective is consistent with Freudian treatment techniques. Whatever you see has a deeper meaning. Through the process of regression, within the transference neurosis, the analyst tries to help the patient get in touch with the underlying instinctual motivations.
In the late 1930s, Fromm, Sullivan, and a number of other analysts began to look at character development, and indeed all of human development, in a different light. These "interpersonal Psychoanalysts, " as they would eventually be called, rejected libidinal