ABSTRACT
The character formation is the individual and personal form through which the subject maintains a necessary degree of constancy and equilibrium. As a clinical phenomenon, the malignant character formation has attracted attention ever since Sigmund Freud and been interpreted by a number of analysts working within differing theoretical idioms. Since the malignant character formation imagines itself to be most true in its suffering, it will often, in its relations with those closest, choose to identify itself with the pain it can endure. The neurotic’s balance between faith and doubt is less known to the psychotic. It is possible to sense a connection with the ambition of the modern welfare society to liberate its citizens from the suffering that humans had taken for granted during earlier epochs. Self-pity might be compared with a narrative transitional object in the child’s narcissistic economy.
