Scand. Psychoanal. Rev.

(2007) 30, 76 - 83 Copyright © 2007

THE
SCANDINAVIAN
PSYCHOANALYTIC
REVIEW
ISSN 0106-2301

Relational-oriented character analysis

A position in contemporary psychoanalysis*

Bjørn Killingmo

Referring to the diversity of psychoanalysis of today, a position called rela-

tional-oriented character analysis is discussed. It is stated that relation and
character as concepts refer to different and partly contradictory points of view
in psychoanalysis, the first one emphasising mobile, dynamic aspects of per-
sonality, the second underlining stable, structural aspects. The principle aim of
the article is to argue how the two perspectives can be theoretically combined
in an overriding object-relational (two-person) conception and to discuss some
implications for analytic technique. Finally, convergences and differences with
other positions or schools in contemporary psychoanalysis are suggested.

Key words: object relation – character – psychoanalytic technique – schools of

contemporary psychoanalysis.

*
In this article, I shall discuss a position in contempo-
rary psychoanalysis which is called relational-oriented
character analysis (Gullestad & Killingmo, 2005). By
calling it a “position,” I allude to selecting some con-
cepts and giving them priority as compared with other
concepts in the theory. These concepts I shall call the
“favourite” concepts of the analyst. More than other
concepts, they will influence how the analyst perceives
and organises the clinical material, and they put their
stamp on the analytic attitude and technical details
as well. In the position to be discussed here, the two
concepts relation and character have been lifted up and
assigned such favourite status. These concepts belong
to different psychoanalytic traditions or schools of
thought, and in some ways, they stand in contrast to
each other. Basically, the concept of relation signi-
fies mobile and dynamic aspects of personality, while
the concept of character points to more stable and
* The article is a revised version of a paper in Norwegian
published in Tidsskrift for Norsk Psykolog­forening (2007)
44: 125‑131.
unchangeable aspects. Can we combine these two ways
of thinking into one consistent theory, and what conse-
quences will a unified perspective have for the clinical
work of the analyst? These are the main questions to
be discussed in this article.
In what follows, I shall start by describing the two
concepts separately. I will discuss how they can be
theoretically combined. Then, I shall enlarge upon
some consequences for analytic attitude and tech-
nique. Finally, I shall suggest convergences and differ-
ences between relational-oriented character analysis
and some other schools in the pluralistic landscape of
contemporary psychoanalysis.
CHARACTER
In a classical article, Rapaport (1951) makes a pro-
found statement: “Without an orientation toward –
and without technical skill in – the understanding of
psychic structure, the knowledge of drives and con-
flicts cannot give a rounded picture of personality. A
psychological theory in terms of energy distributions,
lacking structural concepts, does not make a psychol-
ogy” (p. 361). In the context of psychoanalytic treat-
ment, this means that the psychoanalyst, in his theory
and his technique as well, has to consider both the
mobile and the more stable aspects of the personality
of the patient. As to the psychoanalytic position to be
discussed in this article, the statement of Rapaport is
fundamental.
Character is close to the prototype of a structural
concept. Calling a certain psychological phenomenon
a structure or saying that it is structuralised, implies
that it is relatively stable. Changes take place slowly.
In addition, a structure is marked by being relatively
free of conflict tension and peremptory affect. By this,
many psychic phenomena, being structuralised, come
forward as tools being available to the individual,
regardless of time and situation. Language and defence
mechanisms speak for that. By talking of a person’s
character, we are referring to a relatively stable pat-
tern including different aspects of the personality, like
self representation, relational style, ways of thinking,
regulation of affects and general manner of behaviour.
Thus, the concept of character signifies a global unit
of observation.
Character, as a concept, is traditionally anchored
within normal personality theory. However, clinical
experience tells us that it may serve as a helpful concept
in understanding psychopathology and in therapeutic
contexts as well. Every clinician can testify how move-
able and changing the patient can be. Narratives and
affects change from one session to the next. Even within
the single session, an oscillation from one extreme to
the opposite may take place. From one point of view
we can say that every session is a new happening. How-
ever, from another point of view, we can be surprised
by how unchangeable the patient can be. Certainly, new
narratives emerge, and the content of older narratives is
deepened. However, in style, language and general ways
of relating to others, the patient is one and the same
from session to session. Especially in psychoanalyses
and therapies of long duration, this comes to the fore.
In contrast to the changeable, the patient can, to a
surprising degree, remain unchanged, endlessly repeat-
ing the same pattern. Exact observations like these are
picked up by the concept of character and demonstrate
how useful the concept is.
Freud himself did not work out this side of the
clinical material in detail. His main perspective was a
dynamic one. Taking unconscious drive wishes as his
vantage point, he studied how they, in a condensed,
displaced, disguised and symbolised way, expressed
themselves in symptoms, dreams and free associations.
This perspective on the clinical material could be lik-
ened to solving riddles or by bringing the bits in a
puzzle into their right place.
According to Theodor Reik, a happening that took
place in The Psychoanalytic Society of Vienna in the
thirties can illustrate the preferences of Freud. One
of the young analysts had discussed problems con-
nected with treatment of the character. Obviously this
represented a widening scope compared to what was
usually accepted as analytic material. After the speech,
Freud was asked his opinion. Freud answered that he
himself had taken interest in more limited areas, but
that he agreed to new generations of analysts explor-
ing broader horizons. In his own words: “Myself, I
have always been sailing on lakes, but I wish good luck
to those who dare to embark on the open sea” (see,
Sjöbäck & Wester­lundh, 1977, p. 22).
The one, who has to be honoured for bringing the
concept of character to the fore and who has made it
a focus in analytic technique, is Reich (1933). Fenichel
(1941) and Schjelderup (1941) in Norway have also
underlined the importance of including character for-
mations in the analytic work.
As I see it, the perspective of character includes
three basic implications for psychoanalytic theory and
technique.
1. Derivatives of infantile conflicts and deprivations
find their expressions as much in the personality
as a whole, as in limited symptoms. Thus, the ana-
lyst cannot omit tracing and confronting aspects
of character if deeper structural changes are to be
expected.
2. The character can act as a defensive measure against
drive impulses and other peremptory needs. In an
extreme form, the character structure can be like
an impenetrable shield blocking any experience of
affect. The analytic dialogue will then be nothing
but an intellectual discourse, and the patient pays a
high prize as a prisoner in his self-made jail.
3. The character can function as resistance in the ana-
lytic process. Being ego-syntonic and released auto-
matically, character traits will easily become effective
brakes in the analytic process and in the emotional
attachment to the analyst.
The character traits express themselves in formal
aspects of the personality, and they are present all the
time. Nevertheless, they are not that easy to observe.
The content of the histories, associations and fanta-
sies of the patient tend to occupy the attention of the
77
analyst. As listeners, we may unnoticeably be hidden
in the “story of today”. The narrative aspects of the
material are in the foreground, the structural aspects
in the background. They are not so spectacular. They
are weaved into the fine-meshed control systems of
the ego, and have to be extracted from the patients’
way of perception, his affective expression, his manner
of thinking and communication, his facial look and
his bodily postures as well. The analyst has to take
a more laid-back observational position so that the
minor structural formations become visible to him. He
has to resist the fascination of the story, so to speak, in
order to get hold of the subtle formal elements, where-
after, by way of abstraction, he has to raise the implicit
organisational structure.
We can conclude that in order to practice according
to a character-analytic understanding, the listening per-
spective of the analyst has to be broad and at the same
time tuned in towards the most subtle nuances in the
patients’ language and style (Gullestad & Killingmo,
2002).
RELATION
In what follows, I shall use “relation” as synonymous to
object relation. Probably, most psychoanalysts of today
will adhere to object-relation theory, in one version or
the other. However, as a commonly accepted definition
is not available, I shall concentrate on four points of
view which are basic in the concept of object relation
that are relevant in the present context.
1. All meaningful psychological phenomena in the
human individual are connected to – or embedded
in – conceptions of an object. This point of view is
precisely formulated by Freud: “In the individual’s
mental life, someone else is invariably involved”
(Freud, 1921, p. 69). Every single drive wish, rela-
tional need or thought is directed toward an other
human being, anticipating a certain answer from
the other one. Furthermore, within the individual,
dialogues continually take place with inner objects
consciously or unconsciously. In human dialogues,
affects play an active rôle. Affects signify the ten-
sions in the individual’s relationship to the object.
Thus, affect comes to the fore as a motive of the first
order, overriding other dynamic factors.
2. The concepts of “self ” and “object” do not refer
to outer observation, but to inner representations
of the self, the object and the relationship between
them. These inner representations can be organised
78
as relatively stable patterns (scenarios), putting their
stamps on the person’s social behaviour and his ways
of relating to others. The concept of relational sce-
nario may be helpful as a unit of interpretation in
clinical work.
3. By assigning the self-object scenario a central place
in the theory, the concept of the self also gains a
prominent place. The self is considered in two con-
texts, one as a theoretical concept expressing the
individual’s inner representations of himself, the
other as a subjectively experiencing self. Both will
be the target of analytic interpretations.
4. The child will internalise the relationships he has
experienced between himself and his primary objects
and form inner infantile scenarios. Psychopathology
can best be understood and formulated in terms of
disturbed internalised relational experiences. The
experiences of the child are internalised as they are
seen with the eyes of the child, and stored in terms
of his language and understanding of causality.
Later on, they are reorganised and “nachträglich”
interpreted, and can no longer be recalled in their
earliest form and expressed in the language and con-
cepts of the adult. The infantile scenarios remain
operating as a kind of “urscenarios” in the back-
ground – behind the relational patterns of the adult.
In the analytic setting, derivatives of the infantile
scenarios are emotionally activated and transferred
to the analyst and the analytic scenario. However,
even if the primary objects are acting as the models,
the internalised representations are not “copies”.
They are interpreted versions loaded with the fan-
tasies of the child. From this point of view, we can
better understand why the object representations of
the infantile scenarios often are so demonic, anni-
hilating and merciless.
The above points can be summarised in this way. What-
ever the patient is bringing to the fore in the analytic
setting, an association, a dream, an affect, a memory
or the way he speaks and relates to the analyst, every
aspect of the material is part of an unconscious rela-
tional scenario with infantile roots. In this context, the
patient is not to be regarded as a passive victim, but as
an active agent who, by way of subtle manoeuvres, tries
to make the analyst a partner in a relational scenario
from the past. The patient acts as a director, creating
his own rôle in the drama and that of the analyst as
well. Certainly, the patient may have been a victim in
the past, but in the therapeutic scenario, he acts as a
strategist. In this dynamic between the two parts, the
analytic work aims at having the patient experience
how he unconsciously contributes so that his own pat-
tern of suffering remains unchanged.
CONNECTING TWO LINES
OF THOUGH
h
Te concepts of character and relation bear witness to
different lines of thought. The first one picks up the
more stable aspects of personality, called structures,
while the other calls attention to the mobile aspects, by
Rapaport called the energies. I shall now discuss how
the two can be theoretically connected. Firstly it has
to be ascertained that the two do not have an equal
right, even if they are put together under one heading.
The aim is to adapt the concept of structure to the
concept of relation. Thus, relation is placed ahead of
character, signalling that the object-relational perspec-
tive is the overriding one. Obviously, this is a deviation
from the perspective of Freud. The fundamental idea
of Freud is that unconscious drives form the starting
point of all meaningful psychic activity. The origin
of the drives is within the individual, and in the first
place, they are independent of the relational experi-
ences of the individual. In the conception of Freud,
the drives are from the beginning opposed to culture.
This idea is the point of departure of classical one-
person psychology.
In essence, object relation theory queries this idea.
First of all, object relation theory takes as its point of
departure that the human infant, from the very begin-
ning, is directed toward another human as an object.
Secondly, many psychoanalysts of today are of the
opinion that the drives cannot be seen as isolated from
early object experiences. The concept of drive expresses
the imperative qualities in human wishes and desires,
but in its own right, it is nothing but a hypothetical con-
ception, inserted between the somatic and the psycho-
logical domains. Drives can only be observed by way
of affects and representations which are inextricably
linked to object experiences. These object experiences,
having both a content and a form, are internalised as
inner representations constituting motivational units
of personality.
In the wake of the theory of object relations, the
unit of analysis has shifted from id-ego conflicts to self-
object relations. Psychoanalysis has taken the plunge
from a one-person to a two-person psychology. This
does not mean that the time-honoured concepts of id,
ego and superego, have to disappear from the vocabu-
lary of psychoanalysis. However, it does mean that
we have to consider that all three instances have their
origin in early relational experiences and that intrapsy-
chic conflict as well has to be understood in a widen-
ing scope. The concept of conflict is about one kind
of self-object relations being opposed to another kind
of self-object relations. We have to think in terms of
self-object relations both on the impulsive side and
the defensive side of the conflict. By way of this refor-
mulation, the classical paradigm of conflict is trans-
formed to an overriding relational one. The peremptory
and vigorous qualities of sexuality and aggression can
easily be expressed in terms of the content and the
affective charge of the relational scenario, while the
structural aspects are attended to by their form and
organisation.
The language of object relations can express all
kinds of conflicts, oedipal as well as those related to
dependency and separation. Besides, this language
seems especially fitted to a description of states of
suffering having roots in early object deprivation and
lack of affirmation from empathic objects (Killingmo,
2006). Above all, the reformulation makes it possible
to combine relational and structural thinking in one
consistent theoretical language.
Indeed, historically, the concept of character is
embedded in a one-person perspective. In the con-
ception of Reich (1933), defensive character traits are
more like static mental end-products without implicit
object-directed intentions. Their function was to ward
off impulsive pressure and to maintain intrapsychic
balance. Therefore, in clinical practice, the notion of
relational strategies are to be preferred. A strategy
can be defined as an internalised way of negotiation
with the object which the child has experienced as the
most useful in order to obtain something or to avoid
something. Relational strategies can be relatively rigid
and generalised and thus serve both as defences and as
resistances, on a par with character traits. However, in
addition, a strategy has a built-in intentional message
to the object. Thus, the concept of strategy is more
relational and dynamic than that of character.
How does the psychoanalytic position described
above tally with the essence of classical Freudian the-
ory? Under the heading of The cornerstones of psycho-
analytic theory, Freud (1923, p. 247) stated:
The assumption that there are unconscious men-
tal processes, the recognition of the theory of
resistance and repression, the appreciation of
the importance of sexuality and of the Oedipus
complex – these constitute the principle subject-
matter of psychoanalysis and the foundations of
its theory. No one who cannot accept them all
should count himself a psychoanalyst.
79
Relational-oriented character analysis does not deviate
from any of these conditions. The relational position
aims at incorporating the classical stock of ideas in an
overriding object-relational perspective. In the present
time of pluralism, I think that all positions or schools
of thought calling themselves “psychoanalytic,” should
clarify their kinship to Freud’s formulation. If the ties
of blood are too thin, they should consider whether
psychoanalysis is the right name.
CLINICAL IMPLICATIONS
I shall now turn to some clinical implications of the
theoretical position described in the preceding. In what
way does it influence the focus of the analyst and how
he handles the clinical material? A general comment
should be inserted here. In spite of theoretical disagree-
ment, different schools of psychoanalysis may apply
the same technical measures. Thus, there is no strict
one-to- one relationship between theory and technique.
The technical devices described below have in common
that they provide conceptual space for combining the
relational perspective and the character perspective.
They can be stated as five principles: 1. Focus on “here-
and- now”, 2. Focus on the surface, 3. Focus on resis-
tance, 4. Focus on the negative, 5. Focus on form.
Focus on “here – and – now”
The most adjacent question the analyst has to put to
himself is: What do the patients feel here and now, and
what do I feel myself ? As stated already, the affective
mode constitutes the instant motivational system in
object relationships. The listening perspective of the
analyst has to be tuned towards the present feeling
state of the patient. If not, the analyst risks starting
a dialogue that does not tally with what is emotion-
ally important to the patient. The self-representation
of the patient is not affectively involved, and the dia-
logue will not be meaningful to him in a deeper sense.
In order to capture the present feeling state of the
patient, the analyst has to take up a waiting attitude,
sinking into himself, and from this position, listen
for the emotional qualities transmitted through the
vocal pitch, the intonation in the patient’s manner
of speaking, his breath and bodily posture as well.
Even if the narrative of the patient has a dramatic
tinge, the analyst should hesitate to act immediately
upon this. In any case, the relationship to the analyst
is more here-and-now than the content of the “story
of today”. All the narratives are strained through the
filter of transference.
80
In this context, it may be helpful to distinguish
between the affect which is part of the content of the
narrative and the affect that is actualised here and now
in the relationship of the patient to the analyst. The
first one can be referred to as structuralised affect, the
other as transference affect. The structuralised affect
is affect which is already coded in the language and
narrative context. In contrast to that, the transference
affect has not yet been verbalised and organised in a
context. When the analyst focusses on the transference
affect, he gets into direct touch with emotional qualities
descending from relational scenarios from the patient’s
past. The dialogue then moves ahead by its inherent
tension. Neither the patient, nor the analyst know the
next step. Both are in an “open space”. It may be a
challenging experience to the analyst to stay unpro-
tected in the transference tension. Certainly, there is no
rule stating that the analyst should operate exclusively
in this affective mode. But, if the analyst never focusses
on the transference tension directly, the analysis may
end as a joint reconstruction of a life history, without
having activated emotional qualities from the infantile
scenarios, and the analysis will be structurally more
superficial and experientially shallow.
The analyst should also ask himself: what kind
of object do I represent to the patient here and now,
and what kind of scenario does he unconsciously try
to involve me in? By means of subtle strategies, the
patient applies a pressure on the analyst to have him
act according to his needs. These strategies have to be
disclosed and interpreted. Without having this perspec-
tive present and without using his immediate counter-
transference as a source of information, the analyst
may easily be seduced to participate in a play where
the patient has the upper hand, and the analyst has
lost his analytic position.
Focus on the surface
This principle is on a par with the recommendation of
Freud to start from the prevailing surface, “die jeweilige
Oberfläche”. However, it may be a problem to decide
what element in the manifest material that is most
at the surface. The outstanding voice of the patient,
the voice we all can hear, is easy to spot. But patients
mostly speak with different voices at the same time,
some more low-voiced, some hardly audible and some,
not yet formulated. Nevertheless, they are all there – at
the surface. Such a metaphor of voices can be helpful.
It reminds the analyst that his way of listening has to
be one of widening scope and sensitivity. All the voices
should have a fair chance to be heard. A short clinical
vignette may illustrate this:
 The patient arrives out of breath to his session,
throws himself on the couch and bursts out:
“I am always in a hurry”. After a while he contin-
ues: “I had decided not be late today. We spoke about
it yesterday. I noticed that you didn’t like that I was
late.”
Here, the last sentence represents the outstanding
voice, the one dominating the surface. An apt comment
from the analyst might have been:
“You probably think that I was irritated at you”.
Through this intervention, the analyst tries to deter-
mine what kind of object representation the patient is
unconsciously transferring to him. Possibly, an infantile
scenario of disobedience and fear of punishment would
have been actualised in the transference. However, the
analyst might have chosen another interpretive line as
well. He could have brought another voice to the fore,
and this is exactly what the analyst did in this case. He
said:
“You started the session today by telling me that
you are always in a hurry.”
The analyst goes backwards. Starting with the start,
he gives priority to the formulation “hurry”. He takes
the self-description of the patient as a more compre-
hensive experiential state than the “story of today”. It
is about a person that never calms down. The experi-
ential state of hurry is more on the surface than the
“coming- too-late” theme, because it is always pres-
ent. Therefore it is the first to be addressed. Whether
this was the most productive intervention there and
then, I shall not discuss here. But the vignette illus-
trates the principle of starting from the surface in order
to grasp the material in its widest context. Besides,
by this intervention, the analyst notes that he has not
got involved in the “style of hurry”, which the patient
unconsciously may have wanted in order to take con-
trol of the relationship.
Starting from the surface also implies that the ana-
lytic process moves toward deeper layers, step by step,
with the analyst following tactfully behind. This man-
ner of approach is contrary to the old Kleinian way
of confronting archaic material directly, omitting the
stratification of conflicts in different layers and patterns
of transference. In order to “digest” the interpreta-
tions, the patient should have a fair chance of following
them step-by-step, both emotionally and cognitively. To
obtain this, the analyst has to make clear to the patient
what observations support his interpretations.
Focus on resistance
In the psychoanalytic theory of therapy, the concept
of resistance refers to factors interfering with analytic
progress. A number of phenomena occurring in the
therapeutic relationship, transference for one, can act as
resistance. Of special importance are the “ … organised
solutions which the patient has developed through his
development to keep himself together and to defend
himself against overwhelming and threatening experi-
ences” (Sandler & Sandler, 1994, p, 436). From this
point of view, there will always be elements of reserva-
tion in every patient against giving himself up to the
analyst and the analytic process. The analyst has to
continuously address these organised solutions, called
structuralised resistance (Killingmo, 2001). Pointing
out and interpreting structuralised resistance are dis-
tinctive features of the analytic position I am discuss-
ing here. However, it should be emphsasized that this
pointing out is not like the technique associated with
Reich. For him, character resistance was like a for-
tification that had to be broken down. By using the
concept of strategy instead, resistance is included in
a dynamic context. To be sure, strategies may operate
as resistances in the analytic work. At the same time,
they are charged with relational content. Thus, these
resistances can be seen as persistent messages from the
unconscious of the patient, and this challenge has to
be sensitively received by the analyst, often for a long
time, till the patient himself can hear the call embed-
ded in his own style. In this context, resistance is not
to be seen as an impersonal mechanism; in addition,
“pointing out” adopts a softer sound than that usually
associated with this kind of intervention.
Focus on the negative
In the analytic process, the analyst is inevitably involved
in the patients’ internalised relationships with his pri-
mary objects. Unconsciously, the patient is transferring
emotional qualities derived from the “inner mother”
and the “inner father” onto the analyst. These infantile
scenarios are mostly ambivalent relationships, charged
with love and aggression at the same time. This emo-
tional complexity justifies that the analyst is especially
directed toward the negative aspects, the aggression
from the inner objects on the one hand, the patients
own protest and hatred against the same objects on the
other. It is of vital importance to analytic progress that
the patients’ latent conception of the analyst as a criti-
cal, devaluating and moralising object, is captured and
interpreted. If these negative attitudes are not analysed,
they may easily be covered up by an idealising defensive
transference. Through this, the analytic process does
not get at the infantile qualities in the patient’s feelings,
neither his fear, nor his rage.
81
Focus on form
To analyse form does not represent a new perspective in
psychoanalysis. Fenichel (1941) advised the analyst to
analyse the ego aspect of the material before analysing
the id aspect. Generally, the form makes up the “front-
line” of the self toward the object. By way of form, the
ego regulates the relationship between self-representa-
tion and object-representation. Furthermore, in the
analytic session, the patient immediately regulates his
emotional relationship to the analyst by way of form.
Thus, from the perspective of character, the analyst has
to maintain focus on form in all its variations.
In the therapeutic dialogue, affect is a driving force
in the first place, but the dialogue can easily run dry. By
losing the connection to affective meaning, it may end
up as an intellectual discourse about feelings, without
anything felt at all. In this connection, it may be help-
ful for the analyst to focus on the linguistic form of
the patient.
I shall provide two examples. Many analysts will
recognize the patient speaking of “my anxiety”, “my
aggression”, “my self-destructiveness” and so on. He
does not say: “I am scared”, “I am angry”, “I criti-
cise myself”. By speaking in terms of substantives, the
patient takes an inner position of an observer to his
own feelings. The self, as a feeling subject, is withdrawn
from the language and the words, and the experience
of affect disappears. What is left is nothing but catego-
ries of emotion. If the analyst responds to the patient
by talking of “your anxiety”, “your “aggression”
and so on, the two may unconsciously have entered
into an agreement of keeping feelings away from the
dialogue.
Another example is the patient who is instantly
inserting small words and empty phrases, “in a way”,
“as far as”, “namely,” etc., in his manner of speaking.
They act like steps out of the natural course of mean-
ing, leaving psychological gaps in the text. Thereby,
continuity is broken and affect is separated from cogni-
tive representation. The above examples illustrate how
a mechanism of isolation can be weaved into language,
forming a permanent style.
DIFFERENT PSYCHOANALYTIC
POSITIONS
In the preceding, I have discussed five statements con-
cerning psychoanalytic technique. Many analysts will
agree to these in principle, and some will work along
more-or-less the same lines, in their clinical practice.
However, owing to historical background, the character
analytic perspective seems to have put its stamp on the
82
psychoanalytic climate in Norway distinctively more
than it has in the other Scandinavian countries.
In what follows, I will briefly comment on conver-
gences and disagreements between relational-oriented
character analyses, which I shall call “new” character
analysis, and other positions or schools in the manifold
landscape of present-day psychoanalysis. First of all,
the new character analysis has central features in com-
mon with The contemporary Freudian approach in Lon-
don (Sandler & Sandler, 1998), and the so-called ego-
psychological object-relation theory (Kernberg, 2004).
The ideas of Sandler (1976) concerning unconscious
rôle assignment, rôle responsiveness and actualisation
in the transference  – counter-transference relation-
ship, are included in the concept of relational scenario.
However, the new character analysis seems to attach
more importance than Sandler to the interpretation of
ego-syntonic defences and to point out structuralised
resistances. The new character analysis is on a par with
Kernberg as the concept of drive is concerned. Drives
cannot be seen as inner forces being independent of
object experiences. Like Kernberg, character analysis
considers sexuality and aggression as powerful moti-
vational systems. But in addition, character analysis
considers relational needs as a motivational system in
its own right, separate from drives. The relational needs
make themselves felt in the analytic process through
the patients’ attempts to draw the analyst into specific
scenarios of dependence, affirmation and attachment.
However, in clinical practice, all the main motivational
systems will, more-or- less, operate jointly – woven into
one another.
With classical Kleinian theory and technique, there
are hardly any common elements except that of inter-
nalising a stable and benign inner object. With regard
to the so called Contemporary Kleinians of London
(Schafer, 1997), there are obviously a number of com-
mon features, such as analysis of the here-and-now,
analysis of the total transference (Joseph, 1985) and
analysis of structuralised patterns called “pathological
organisations”(Steiner, 1985). The new character analy-
sis and the positions calling themselves relational psy-
choanalysis have a common base in the idea of mutual
interaction between the patient and the analyst. The
notion of the analyst as an independent observer can-
not be accepted. However, character analysis delimits
itself sharply toward the extreme position of intersub-
jectivity, maintaining that it is both possible and neces-
sary for the analyst to be present in the relationship as
an observer, at the same time being a participant in the
dynamics of transference and counter- transference.
Through self-reflection, the analyst can gain sufficient
observational distance to sort out and to interpret the
patient’s attempts to take control of the relationship
(Gullestad & Killingmo, 2005).
In the new character analysis, the concept of self
has taken up a more advanced position than has
been common in classical psychoanalysis. The ana-
lyst closely monitors the subjective experience of the
patient. Here, character analysis is on a par with the
school of self-psychology. Problems connected with
self-representation are often brought to the fore in the
sessions, and the self-feeling of the patient, his inner
picture of himself and his existential feeling of being,
are continually included in the listening perspective
of the analyst. If the self-state of the patient becomes
fragmented and dominated by lack of meaningfulness,
the analyst has to shift from an interpretive to an affir-
mative strategy (Killingmo, 1995, 2006). A decisive dif-
ference between self-psychology and character analysis
seems to be that the latter gives higher priority than
the first to the interpretation of internalised aggres-
sive object relationships, and points out how they are
expressed in negative transference.
CONCLUSION
I started by quoting Rapaport (1951), stating that a
theory of personality pleading to be complete, has to
have concepts dealing with dynamic aspects of psychic
phenomena as well as concepts dealing with structural
phenomena. I have tried to bring this point of view a
step further by connecting relation and character theo-
retically in a language of object relations. Within this
background, relation-oriented character analysis is an
analytic practice especially focussing on the patient’s
internalised and organized relational strategies operating
between self-representation and object representation as
they are unfolding in the dynamics of transference and
counter-transference in the therapeutic dialog. Whether
this analytic practice is delimited to a degree so that it
deserves a separate name, or whether it is to be seen
as a more cursory placing together of elements from
different schools of thought, is open to discussion.
In any case, the leading idea in this paper has been to
integrate the stable into the mobile.
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Bjørn Killingmo
Skøyensvingen 12
O375 Oslo
Norway
e-mail: bjorn.killingmo@psykologi.uio.no
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