Psychotherapy of Neurotic Character. David Shapiro. New York:  Basic Books, 1989.

In this important new book David Shapiro introduces us to the dynamics of neurotic character structure in the analytic process. In a previous book, Neurotic Styles , Shapiro has given us a detailed description of the workings of personality styles and provided us with an analysis of the dynamics that reinforce and shape the expression of cognitive, affective, and defensive modes of being. In Autonomy and Rigid Character , he analyzed the conditions under which rigidity or autonomy of character can be developed or hindered in an individual. In the current book Shapiro integrates his ideas and applies them to an analysis of the therapeutic process. His principal thesis rests on the idea that neurosis is a distortion of the whole personality rather than the result of conflict between unconscious impulses and defenses. Neurotic personality, reacting against itself, creates the conditions for self-deception and lack of self-awareness, which bring about self-estrangement, a key feature of a neurotic character. It is the goal of the therapeutic process to promote a greater sense of self-awareness and an active recognition and acceptance of the articulation of one's feelings and attitudes.

The book is organized into three parts. The first part deals with general principles of neurotic character and psychotherapy. Shapiro presents a reinterpretation, I would say an enlargement, of classic themes, ideas, and techniques of psychoanalysis. At the center of the therapeutic process is a dynamic by which an individual's self-deception and distortion of self-awareness gradually become unveiled and acknowledged. The symptoms of self-estrangement and self-deception are not subjectively experienced as ego alien, or as intrusions. Rather, neurotic symptoms are described as characterological, integrated in an individual's attitudes, feelings, and subjective experience of self. It is the work of the therapist to minimize the distortions of self-awareness and of reality.

In the second part