Three Characters

'this book is worth the investment of both reading and thinking about. […] The book takes the reader, sometimes at breath-taking speed, through Bollas’s ideas about character developed over 30 plus years of clinical work and writing. Through his dissecting and describing the lived experiences of the various character structures, the reader is offered a way of thinking about clinical work with these sufferers. […] Bollas’s endeavour to understand the territory and to give his patients the space to be who they are comes through. In answer to one of the questions, Bollas writes of ‘the right of free speech in analysis’ (p. 67). I think the book shows something of how he has tried to demonstrate this in his writing as well as how he tries to give this freedom to his patients.'

-- Jan McGregor, British Journal of Psychotherapy 38, 1 (2022)

The chapters are a wonderful way of thinking about object relations in action. There is a sense of academic surety in Bollas’ psychoanalytical explanation, which, as an integrative counsellor, does not always sit easy with me. These lectures inspire me to know more, and I imagine most readers will feel the same. Have a notepad and pencil handy!

-- Gavin Conn, counsellor in private practice in London, ‘Therapy Today’ April 2022

‘In these pages, one can feel how Bollas has spent decades venturing to enter states of deep identification with his analysands […] Bollas is perhaps examining some of the more deadened, character-disordered aspects of psychoanalytic thinking, giving each of these age-old characters a creative reorganising that allows for new and deepening understandings.’

-- Nancy de Holl, Institute for Psychoanalytic Training and Research, IJP Vol. 104 (2023) Issue 2

'Three Characters is a short book tightly focussed on the theory and practice of intensive psychoanalysis. [...] Thanks to its genesis in years of lecturing and teaching, Three Characters is written in a vivid, free-flowing, and mostly jargon-free style that allows ample scope for a reader's wider reflection on how the ideas in the book might be relevant outside the consulting room. [...] As well as its obvious clinical applicability, one might wonder if this book would be a useful resource for a character development workshop in a creative writing group; this would make sense in the context of Bollas’s decades-long mission to elucidate the contribution of unconscious creativity to human development and psychoanalytic work.'

-- Alexander Pearce, Psychodynamic Prac