ABSTRACT
Character and the Unconscious. By a man's ' character ' at any time we may mean either his dominant sentiments and beliefs or the whole system of all his sentiments and complexes, conscious and unconscious alike, the entire organization of his dispositions. This last is perhaps better named his personality. 1 Psycho-analysts have rather overworked their explanations, which, although developed chiefly in connection with morbid conditions of mind, have succeeded none the less in revealing a great deal about human nature of which good selfrobservers were already aware. " Forgetfulness wrote Nietzsche in 1886, " is no mere vis inertice, as the superficial believe; rather is it a power of obstruction, active, and, in the strictest sense of the word, positive ... a very sentinel and nurse of psychic order, repose, and etiquette." 1
