The author, from the perspective of having trained, taught, and lived within a comparative institute for nearly twenty years, views Preston and Shumsky's integrative sensibility and their use of the metaphor of immigrants as compelling, optimistic, and consistent with forward edge thinking. To complexify their perspective, the author revisits an old psychoanalytic concept, that of character, in order to explore the role it may play in our willingness to move toward and embrace an integrative sensibility. Using the concept of character in a contemporary and non-pathologizing way, the author considers character in terms of the way we are with each other in relation to otherness and alterity within the field. By considering the way we shape and live out theoretical preferences marked by who we are, the author concludes that who we are as people and how we are with each other matters far more than our theory choices.