Taking Freud's model of dreamwork as a model for all unconscious thinking,
Bollas argues that we dreamwork ourselves into becoming who we are. He
illustrates how patient and analyst can use such unconscious processes to alter
self experience.Being a Character shows how each person unconsciously invests the ordinary
objects of life with particular and private meaning. As each person
subsequently voyages through the environment he 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 unconscious 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 Frued point to an entirely different 'resolution' 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, and the author draws on his clinical experience as well as
the notebooks and the writings of poets, scientists, painters, sculptors and
anthropologists to support his view that each person dreams himself into
existence and walks about henceforth in his own private dream.
