14 February 1960: Fundamental, Basic, Inborn Character Disorder. Cogitations

There are occasions when it is important to know what are the fundamental characteristics of the patient with whom we are dealing. By this I mean that there are certain qualities of personality – a capacity for loving is one – which are of great importance in determining the nature of the person and of his behaviour. We would like to know what are the patient's fundamental characteristics, but curiosity on this topic is hampered because the questions that are the tools of curiosity are often ill-suited to the investigation we have in mind. The vocabulary that we employ to frame our questions has been elaborated to serve purposes that are often very different from those of the psychoanalyst; we are hampered, in a manner with which we are already familiar, in our attempts to frame theories and solutions of problems. But we give insufficient attention to the obstruction of the formation of the question. For example, I have said we would like to know the fundamental characteristics of the patient, but this question as it stands does not provide the emotional experience of the analysis with sufficient precision to admit of an answer. I do not suggest there is any question that does, and if I now propose some elaboration of my question it is not to solve a problem but to propound it. The question, ‘What are the fundamental characteristics?’, I shall replace by two others:

1. What are the characteristics that are inborn and irreducible by any means (short of a physical disaster of the kind experienced in certain forms of physical illness or brain damage) that have been shown to be associated with character change?

2. What are the characteristics, which an answer to the first question would specify, that occupy the dominant executive position in this man's psyche? That is to say, if a capacity for love is one of his main inborn characteristics, does it in fact inform his outlook and behaviour?