With the recent attention to childhood sexual abuse, trauma theories based on dissociation have reemerged in the clinical literature. These theories place central pathogenic significance on the childhood trauma for understanding adult psychopathology and conceive of the retrieval, abreaction, and integration of these experiences as the means of overcoming dissociation and thereby producing psychotherapeutic change. The author argues that such theories of psychopathology and psychotherapy predispose the therapist to pay insufficient attention to the dynamic workings of character. Character is understood here as an individual's continuous, distinctive, and consciously unarticulated form of functioning, “mode of existence” (W. Reich, 1972), or “style” (D. Shapiro, 1965). Appreciation of the processes of character has implications for the treatment of patients who report past trauma.