The depressive character.

Abstract

The depressive character is characterized by perpetual and unsuccessful efforts to maintain self-esteem and to avoid a sense of helplessness. Such individuals suffer from chronic depression which may or may not be masked, but which permeates their character. Although the condition is among the commonest seen in many of our clinics and practices, it remains without a generally accepted diagnostic form. It is suggested that the essential, clinical, dynamic, and structural features of the depressive character are: (1) consistently low self-esteem and a sense of helplessness, dependent object relations and chronic guilt; (2) self-directed aggression and masochism are frequent but not invariable; (3) extensive use of the mechanism of denial is as common as the previously described obsessional defenses seen in patients subject to psychotic depression; (4) often the depressive character suffers from intense oral envy; (5) depressive character traits may help to ward off any of the basic anxieties, namely, object loss, loss of love, castration anxiety, and superego anxiety (guilt) (6) the depressive character may be similar to a number of related disorders, namely, the obsessional character, hysterical characters with a large oral component, and depressive borderline states; (7) sensitivity to loss, sadness, and fragility of self-esteem makes the depressive character especially vulnerable to regression into overt depression; (8) the persistence of oral incorporative mechanisms, ambivalent, dependent object relations, ego versus superego tension with depressive affect, and sensitivity to loss are characteristic of the ego of the depressive character.