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javorstein's review
5.0
Solid and understandable intro to the etiology and treatment of the three eponymous character disorders. Bollas argues for a relational-adjacent analytic technique that seeks to create an empathetic holding environment whereby the patient's character axioms and fundamental idioms can relay in circuit with those of the analyst's such that the schizoid deficits from the patient's pre-oedipal life can be progressively filled by a full and humanized other which enacts a characterological transformation. Bollas is unfailingly optimistic in his belief that even those with supposedly incurable character disorders can undergo substantial personality change, which is a heartening opinion amid much of psychoanalytic literature. Whether a child replaces the unreliable other with the self that leaves an empty internal world, introjects the pain of the environment-mother in order to sustain the relation to the maternal object, or defensively turns to internal mental events when met with an underwhelming and unresponsive external object world, in each case the child establishes certain axioms around a 'missing core' of their personality; in each case, though, Bollas always argues that such individuals are unanalyzable. These axioms can always present in the transference, even if not in the typical neurotic fashion, which, when mirrored and presented back to the patient, allow for evacuated beta elements to be symbolized as alpha elements that can restructure the core of the self left underdeveloped in the maternal order and onwards. Overall an insightful book with a hopeful and positive outlook on the possibility of analytic treatment for personality disorders.
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