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When I first received this book I had some trepidation about reading it and writing a review. Here was a book, over 500 pages in length, full of statistics, tables, charts and graphs, not exactly a psychoanalyst's delight. As a clinician, I doubted that I would find it useful but I gritted my teeth and started to read this heavy tome, expecting to wade through a dull, pedantic volume and trying to extract some meaning from what I believed would be phenomenological clusters. Simply skimming through the table of contents indicated that the author was paying considerable attention to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM IV; American Psychiatric Association, 1994).
I was shocked when I realized that I could not have been more mistaken. Beginning with the Preface, I was immediately attached to the smooth-flowing narrative that struck so many resonant chords. There is absolutely no pedantry in this book and even the charts and statistics are fascinating. Dr. Stone supplies us with many interesting facts and unique viewpoints.
He begins by distinguishing personality and character. He defines many different types of personalities, based on behavioral constellations and an “amalgam” of traits. Character, on the other hand, is viewed as a “reflection” of various defense mechanisms. I find this a very useful distinction that helps form a continuum between Freud's description of various characters such as oral, anal, phallic, and genital, and the character disorders that are covered in the borderline spectrum, which emphasizes maladaptive factors as well as defenses.
The author writes with such lucidity and candor that it is impossible to put this book down without having learned something interesting or compelling.
The chapters have a somewhat similar structure and sequence. The author begins with an historical review, sometimes going back to antiquity, and progressing to discuss contemporary articles. He not only describes a sequence of descriptions and