Most forms of psychotherapy are rooted in psychoanalytical concepts. Although the majority of psychotherapists and counsellors do not comply with the classical Freudian model – they do not see their clients four or five times a week nor do they sit behind them while they are lying on a couch – they accept the basic psychoanalytical project. This can perhaps be expressed in the following way: unacceptable ‘instinctual’ wishes are warded off and ‘repressed’ into the ‘unconscious’. When they try to return to consciousness, they have to do so in disguise – and a common disguise is that of a symptom. This symptom has to be demasked, so to speak – what has been unconscious has to be made conscious for the symptom to disappear. This is, of course, an over-simplified account, but it is, I think, the essence of the psychoanalytical process and has remained central to psychotherapeutic endeavour.

In the history of any scientific discipline, certain people stand out because they effectively defined the discipline, separated it from neighbouring specialities, and gave it a local habitation and a name. Three names stand out in the history (brief though it may be) of the scientific study of personality. The first is A. Heymans, a Dutch philosopher who almost single-handedly introduced the various theoretical, methodological and psychometric methods that characterise modern personality study (Eysenck, 1992). In the early years of this century, he put forward theories of specific personality dimensions, carried out rating studies on large numbers of subjects, correlated traits and devised a primitive method of factor analysis, derived factors that have stood the test of time (extraversion and neuroticism, to give them their modern names), and even went so far as to carry out psychological and physiological experiments to test deductions from these theories. As a reward for all this pioneering effort he is completely neglected in the modern literature; Hall et al (1985), in their Introduction to Theories of Personality gave much room to nonentities like Medard Boss, but make no mention of Heymans. He committed the ultimate crime of not being born in America, and must therefore be considered a non-person. Fortunately his theories and methodologies five on, largely in the London School.

Since the last update on this subject in the British Journal of Psychiatry (Forster, 1988), and the 1986 publication of the reading list from the Section for Social, Community and Rehabilitation Psychiatry, profound changes have been taking place in Britain, and therefore to the context in which the subject has to be considered. Some of these changes were a continuation of a philosophy encouraged in the early 1980s, namely the promotion of individualism and the provision for self, accompanied by the diminution or denial of a societal or welfare approach. In addition, many members of society have been subject to increasing uncertainty in their lives because of the rapid spread of short-term work contracts and part-time work into both the public and private sectors.