Table Of ContentBEING A
CHARACTER
Being a Character shows how each person unconsciously invests the ordi
nary objects of life with very particular and private meaning. As each
person subsequently voyages through the environment he or she
encounters objects that are already laden with previously invested
meaning and in this sense the individual is evoked by encounters with
objects.
Taking Freud's theory of the dream work as a model for all uncon
scious thinking, Bollas argues that we dream work ourselves into
becoming who we are, and he illustrates how the analyst and the
patient use unconscious processes to develop new psychic structures
that the patient can use to alter his or her self experience.
Building on this ground, the latter part of the book describes very
special kinds of self experience, including the tragic madness of women
cutting themselves, the odd experience of a cruising homosexual in bars
and baths, the demented ferocity of the Fascist state of mind, and every
person's self experience as a member of his or her historical epoch. He
includes a seminal chapter on the Oedipus Complex, arguing that
Sophocles and Freud point to an entirely different "resolution" to this
complex than heretofore argued in any of the schools of psychoanalytic
thought.
The main purpose of Being a Character is to rethink the nature of the
individual's creation of a lived environment. The author draws on his
clinical experience as well as the notebooks and writings of poets, scien
tists, painters, sculptors and anthropologists to support his view that
each person dreams him- or herself into existence and walks about
henceforth in his or her own private dream.
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"In this extraordinary book, Bollas depicts how the unconscious enters
into the experience of self and structures the meaning of our inanimate
and human environments. For Bollas, the self can be a generative
asylum that allows the individual to play with and sample aspects of
reality. With great skill and charm Bollas brings a fresh perspective to
many central issues in psychoanalysis such as character formation and
the creative process. Being a Character demonstrates again that Bollas is
among the most original of contemporary psychoanalytic authors."
Arnold H. Modell, M.D.
"Being a Character is an extraordinarily rich and original book about
what human subjectivity feels like, how it makes a world, how the world
makes it... Christopher Bollas is one of the most stimulating and useful
writers about psychology working in the English language today."
Robert Hass
"An original interpreter of the Winnicottian legacy, Christopher Bollas
brilliantly illuminates the realm of psychic creativity - the individual
making of meaning. Few other psychoanalytic writers have been able to
range so widely between conscious and unconscious, theory and sub
jective experience, reflection and emotion."
Jessica Benjamin, Ph.D.
"Christopher Bollas is that rarest of psychoanalysts who can blend the
cool linear scientific ego seamlessly with the flowing warmth of poetic
self to evoke the ineffable complexity of lived experience. In Being a
Character he takes us on a journey along the frontiers of self knowledge
that becomes at the same time a deeply penetrating excursion into the
depths of subjectivity. After immersing myself (my self) into Bollas's
multifaceted world and self, I resurfaced enriched and enhanced."
ErnestS. Wolf, M.D.
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Christopher Bollas
BEING A
CHARACTER
Psychoanalysis and
Self Experience
O Routledge
ft j^ Taylor & Francis Group
LONDON AND NEW YORK
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First published in the United States of America by
Hill & Wang, a division ofFarrar, Straus & Giroux 1992
Reprinted in paperback in 1993, 1994,
1997, 2003 and 2006 by Routledge
27 Church Road, Hove, East Sussex BN3 2FA
270 Madison Avenue, New York NY 10016
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
Copyright © 1992 by Christopher Bollas
All rights reserved. Published by arrangement with Hill and Wang,
a division ofFarrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC.
All rights reserved
Printed and bound in Great Britain by
MPG Books Ltd, Bodmin, Cornwall
This publication has been produced with paper manufactured to strict
environmental standards and with pulp derived from sustainable forests.
Excerpt from "Cut" from The Collected Poems of Sylvia Plath, edited by Ted
Hughes. Copyright © 1963 by Ted Hughes. Reprinted by permission of
HarperCollins Publishers
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 13: 978-0-415-08815-2
ISBN 10:0-415-08815-1
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For Mark and Blair
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Acknowledgments
Ken Bruder, Edward Corrigan, Berthe Ficarra, Pearl-Ellen
Gordon, and Murray Schwartz kindly read an early draft of
Part I of the book, and I am grateful to them for their
comments. Two of the chapters in Part I were also given a
very close read by members of the Santa Barbara Summer
Workshop in Psychoanalysis and I am pleased to thank the
members of this group and its organizer, Laurie Ryavec.
Linda Mason, who typed the many versions of the book,
and who made important editorial suggestions, has been a
great help. I am also grateful to Alison Wertheimer for some
deft copyediting at exactly the right moment.
I would like to thank my publisher, Arthur Rosenthal, for
his unqualified enthusiasm for this book from start to finish,
and for his shrewd and intelligent suggestions along the way.
And Suzanne and Sacha: thank you.
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Contents
Introduction 3
I
1. Aspects of Self Experiencing 11
2. The Evocative Object 33
3. Being a Character 47
4. Psychic Genera 66
5. The Psychoanalyst's Use of Free Association 101
II
6. Cutting 137
7. Cruising in the Homosexual Arena 144
8. Violent Innocence 165
9. The Fascist State of Mind 193
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