This book integrates object relations theory, ego psychology, and character analytic approaches to provide a new understanding of human behavior and character development. In itself, this integration is a remarkably innovative undertaking, yielding a consistent, understandable and clinically useful view of psychopathology, therapy, and health.

Johnson uses an active treatment approach that draws upon all major schools of psychotherapeutic thought, choosing techniques that serve specific purposes and outlining changes in behavioral, affective, and cognitive domains that are necessary for lasting characterological change. Focusing on character pathology resulting from disorders in attachment, the book discusses etiology, characteristic affects, behaviors and cognitions, bodily expressions of character, and therapeutic objectives and techniques.