Traditional Psychoanalytic Characterology Reexamined in the Light of Constitutional and Cognitive Differences Between the Sexes*

Traditional psychoanalytic characterology [e.g., as enunciated by Freud (1905, 1925), Abraham (1927), Ferenczi (1956), and Wilhelm Reich (1929)] was wedded to the notion of a linear progression of developmental stages, beginning with the “oralerotic” and culminating in the “genital” stage. Corresponding to each prominent subdivision of this continuum was a particular deformation of the character; for example, “anal-sadistic stage” was linked with obsessive-compulsive character or “genital stage” with hysterical character. For a modern psychoanalytical exposition of these correlations, the reader should consult the paper of Kernberg (1970). In traditional metapsychology, the supposition was that psychological trauma of a particular stage predisposed to fixation at or later regression to that stage, and also to a character development marked by the behavioral eccentricities peculiar to that psychosexual stage.

Fixations at the earliest stages were held responsible for the classical psychoses (schizophrenia and manic-depression), although milder degrees of disturbance at these early stages were conceptualized as underlying certain (nonpsychotic) character disorders; viz., depressive character-pathology was equated with “oral” deprivation, etc. These views have been enunciated by Melanie