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David Shapiro's progressive views on character structure continue to influence psychoanalytic theory, technique, and research. Personality and Psychopathology: Critical Dialogues with David Shapiro, edited by Craig Piers (2011), brings together keys aspect of Shapiro's work as leading psychodynamic theorists and researchers discuss the implications of his writings. What is unique about the book is that Shapiro writes a formal response to each chapter, and the reader gets a chance to have a window into how Shapiro reformulates or clarifies his own perspective and at times reaches new elaborations.
Shapiro's ideas are especially important and relevant at this time as the pendulum has swung from a psychodynamic framework to a biological one, and the effect of meaning of the pathology has been relatively neglected. Shapiro's (1965, , 2000) work is directly about knowing the patient through a thorough understanding of his character instead of solely focusing on his symptoms or diagnosis. This characterological understanding of psychopathology emphasizes the dynamics of one's personality structure, which encompasses one's attitudes, beliefs, main affects, defenses, and symptoms. The questions that such an understanding of psychopathology brings abound: Are there universal character structures that can explain various psychopathologies? Is it possible to trace the developmental pathways behind character styles? What are the therapeutic implications of this characterological point of view? How does this differ from traditional psychoanalytic psychotherapy? Does research support this understanding? Although some of these questions are answered in the book through a dialogue between Shapiro and different writers, some are left open.
Starting with Sydney Blatt's chapter entitled “Two Configurations of Personality Development and Psychopathology: Etiologic and Therapeutic Implications,” Blatt and Shapiro explore whether there is a possibility of recognizing fundamental categories