Customer Reviews

Character Styles

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Over a ten year period, Stephen M. Johnson wrote a series of extraordinarily useful and well organized books integrating theories of personality development and therapeutic objectives at neurotic and borderline functioning. In the introduction here he writes about his integrated theory: "It is not psychoanalytic, not object relations, not self-psychology or ego psychology. It is not behavioral or cognitive or affective. It is not characterological, developmental, interactive, phenomenological. It is not theoretical, empirical, experiential, intuitive, or deductive. It is all of this and more in a mix. It attempts to answer important questions with the information available. For each of us who are curious about such questions, this is what we must do."

Character Styles includes revised chapters from Characterological Transformation, Humanizing the Narcissistic Style and The Symbiotic Character, but the addition here of chapters on masochistic, hysterical and obsessive-compulsive characters makes the entire series a little masterpiece. Dr. Johnson's work seems to have grown most out of The Symbiotic Character since, as he writes, "the strategies found successful in liberating the symbiotic character can be of nearly universal significance." The first books in the series contain diagrams for energetic body work based on Reich and Lowen that are curiously missing here.

The major character styles he addresses include The Hated Child: The Schizoid Experience, The Abandoned Child: The Symbiotic Withdrawal, The Owned Child: The Symbiotic Character, The Used Child: The Narcissistic Experience, The Defeated Child: Social Masochism and the Patterns of Self-Defeat, The Exploited Child: Hysterical Defenses and the Histrionic Personality and The Disciplined Child: The Obsessive-Compulsive Personality.

My copy of Character Styles is dogeared and contains scribbled notes that are a record of the development of my own understanding and thinking about personality over the last ten years. I owe that development and understanding and where it's taken my thought today much more than I've realized to Dr. Johnson's insightful, compassionate, well-referenced work.

Once I started a chapter, I *had* to read it through no matter the hour. Despite the jargon, despite the too infrequent "for example"'s, he clearly describes a dozen friends, relatives and, of course, myself -- *anyone* whose early childhood is known to me. His uncanny grasp of my "inner life" experience astounded me and was worth the price right there. I particularly appreciate his using the same structure for each chapter, always winding up with that style's Therapeutic Objectives. Professionals should also appreciate his indicating what difficulties a therapist can encounter when treating a given style. This is one of the three most important and rewarding books in my forty years of reading.

This book was the only text used in my graduate Psychopathology class. Five years later I have gone back again and again for use in my practice. Johnson brilliantly integrates most of the psychodynamic schools of thought to construct a "characterological-developmental" model of motivation, personality development, and treatment of psychopathology. He delineates components of character in terms of etiology, symptoms, cognitive styles, defenses,pathogenic beliefs, self and object representations, and affective characteristics. In addition he outlines treatment goals and objectives for each character in cognitive, affective, and behavioral areas. Johnson manages to bring psychoanalytic terminology down to earth and put it in existential terms (e.g. The Hated Child, The Used Child, etc).

Johnson's work constitute his attempt at constructing a paradigm shift in the sense that he proposes a cohesive integration of psychoanalytic developmental models as a move away from classical drive psychoanalysis. It is at once aesthetically stimulating and immanently useful. It is hard to agree with everything he says, but a paradigm shift is a very ambitious project.

I think it is pretty challenging reading--for the professional or the very dedicated. However, those who stick with it are likely to learn something about themselves (he speaks of "styles" rather than just extreme "personality disorders"), learn valuable lessons about parenting, and understand their relationships better. I agree with a previous reviewer's comment that it is a treasure.

I have bought this book a long time ago and it has been invaluable resource. It helped me through my self-managed process of integration. It has helped me understand some of the traits of the people I know. And it has helped me understand that it is sometimes just a fine line that separates a personality trait - or a cluster of traits - and a disorder.

The amount of work behind that book must be impressive. Written with understanding and compassion, this is a wonderful book for layman and professional alike.

I will never part with this book. It's an eye-opener like no other book on human nature that I know of. I wish I read this book when I was younger; it would make my life a whole lot better. I also would've been a better parent. This book should be mandatory reading for every couple that's expecting a child -- but also the adult children with charcterological problems.

I'm just out of words to convey my admiration for Stephen Johnson. The West Coast is lucky to have him and his practice there. I live in Boston and wish I had access to this brilliant psychoterapist as a student or a patient on behalf of somebody else, but who knows, maybe I need it too :-)

The book discusses the most destructive personality types and explains how those personalities were formed in childhood. It also talks how these people should be treated, and the obstacles that therapists and other helpers face with such individuals. Worth every dollar!

I would only ask Dr. Johnson what happens to the character of the person when they were overindulged as a child -- not excessively controlled or abused as is the case with most people who have personality disorders,

Also, the picture on the dust jacket of this book is quite silly and irrelevant -- bu that's the publisher's fault.

This book has been extremely helpful to me in understanding the inner feelings of different character types. When I have difficulty knowing what to discuss, I will ask about these kinds of feelings and they have been so useful in describing to people what they might be feeling. I have recommended it to several colleagues as well. I wish it had been required in grad school. Very well done by a man who seems quite kind and understanding of deeper layers of the self.

This is a Masterpiece integrating a century of psychology. Special attention is given to the etiology of every character formation.
"Know thyself" has suddenly become more accessible.

Johnson's characterological developmental theory, basically an object-relations theory, links six character types to developmental obstacles and frustrated needs. Character types can be more or less healthy. At the more pathological end of development character types manifest as personality disorders, at the adaptive end as character styles. Johnson describes how character styles represent the child's attempt to accommodate to deficient parenting relationships and implied relational meanings. Treatment goals are framed in terms of cognitive, affective and behavioural objectives. A useful compliment to more purely cognitive approaches, e.g. Young's schema therapy.

This book clarifies the nature of personality disorders. I was researching narcissim for my Master's in Counseling program. Some of the terminology and concepts wer difficult to understand, but the overal picture is crystal clear. This book should be mandatory reading for all therapists. It is the most comprehensive work in modern times on the nature and range of personality styles. I wonder what the author is doing now?

Next to Alexander Lowen, Stephen M Johnson is the clearest, most sincere and most honest writer on human functioning available. He has incorporated the character analytic perspective of Lowen and Wilhelm Reich and blended it, albeit not seamlessly, with object relations. Johnson's compassion is evident in the way that he employs every useful technique from any tradition to help clients. His writing is slightly stilted, but clearly Johnson 1)wants to be taken seriously and 2) wants to be precise, because precision is necessary to 'corner' the resistance of character. If bioenergetics is the harmonizing of body heart and mind then this is clearly bio-energetics!