Meetings of the New York Psychoanalytic Society

October 10, 1967. THE ANALYSIS OF CHRACTER. Martin H. Stein, M.D.

At a special meeting to celebrate the seventieth birthday of Dr. Edith Jacobson, Dr. Stein spoke of the understanding of character in the analytic setting, following Waelder's principle of multiple function. He traced the historical development of our understanding of character from the classification based on predominant drives (Abraham, Freud) to the emphasis on defense and resistance (W. Reich), and then, finally, to Fenichel's encyclopedic approach based on intersystemic conflict and the libidinal phase. Dr. Stein postulates that character traits and neurotic symptoms are antithetical, although he recognizes that they do influence one another and even merge. Character includes a wide range of stable patterns of thought, affect, and behavior which are the 'mark' of the individual; neurotic symptoms usually do not acquire stability. Character traits are rarely a matter for complaint; symptoms generally are. Symptoms are always pathological but whether a character trait is pathological or healthy is more difficult to determine. In the analytic situation the symptom may be treated as if it occurs in a closed system within the personality of the patient; external forces of environment and culture are temporarily attenuated. A unique contribution of analysis is the studying of the source of the symptom and its connection with the individual's character.

With the development of the structural theory, the functions of the ego included elements reacting to and upon the external world. Waelder conceived of multiple forces acting in an open system, taking into account the ego's relation to reality as well as to the id and superego. This concept of drives, ego, and superego interacting with external reality is more sophisticated than the earlier model of conflict and compromise. However, the need to know about the patient's external reality has led some analysts astray by modifying the analytic situ