Within this book Dr. Otto Kernberg, one of the most influential contemporary psychoanalytic theorists, provides clinicians with tools to take notes and treat severe cases of personality disorder, including borderline and narcissistic structures. In this book, Dr. Kernberg not only describes techniques he has found useful in clinical practice but also further develops theories formulated in his previous work and critically reviews of their recent contributions to the areas with which he is concerned. Focusing on the management of unresponsive and or difficult patients, he discusses such questions like how to handle patients who persistently threatened suicide and how to differentiate treatable from un-treatable antisocial patients.

Severe Personality Disorders: Psychotherepeutic Strategies

Health, Fitness & Dieting

Kernberg, Otto F.

Mental Health

Yale Univ Pr

In this important new book, Dr. Otto F. Kernberg, one of the world's foremost psychoanalysts, explores the role of aggression in severe personality disorders and in normal and perverse sexuality, integrating new developments in psychoanalytic theory with findings from clinical work with severely regressed patients. The book also integrates Dr. Kernberg's recent studies of the descriptive, structural, and psychodynamic features of problems stemming from pathological aggression with the vicissitudes of their psychoanalytic treatment. Finally, Dr. Kernberg demonstrates the importance of differential diagnosis for effective psychoanalytically inspired treatment of these disorders, providing a rich variety of clinical illustrations. The book begins by relating the dual-drive theory of libido and aggression to contemporary developments in affect theory. Dr. Kernberg then applies this general theory of affects to aggression, which in its pathological form centers on the affect of hatred. He analyzes sado-masochistic, hysterical-hysteroid, and narcissistic-antisocial spectrums of personality disorders, emphasizing how aggression is structured in each group. Dr. Kernberg next describes and updates the theoretical frame underlying his approach to the treatment of these disorders, outlines their clinical manifestations, and illustrates their diagnosis and treatment, ranging from standard psychoanalysis with infantile personalities, to psychoanalytic psychotherapy with borderline personalities, to the psychotherapeutic approach to the treatment of psychosis and hospital milieu treatment in the management of highly regressed patients. In the final section, Dr. Kernberg links the findings from psychoanalytic approaches to personality disorders with those from the psychoanalytic study of sexual perversions.

Aggression in Personality Disorders and Perversions

Yale University Press

In this book a psychoanalytic clinician and theoretician of world renown integrates current knowledge of the psychodynamics of individuals, groups, and organizations into a new theoretical framework. Dr. Otto F. Kernberg shows how the interplay of libidinal and aggressive impulses enacted within the dynamic unconscious of the individual also occurs at the level of groups and social organizations. He sheds new light on the turbulent nature of human interactions in groups, suggests how this understanding may help to resolve conflicts at the group and institutional levels, and provides a model for achieving effective institutional change. Dr. Kernberg applies his integrative frame to the analysis of the regressive processes in groups, the nature of institutional leadership, and the conditions of rational functioning that may protect the organization from the most dangerous consequences of regressive group processes. To illustrate the therapeutic uses of the model, he considers its applications to group therapy and the therapeutic community; to illustrate its consultative potential, he includes a section on problems in psychoanalytic organizations. In conclusion, the author extends his theoretical framework to the social sciences, proposing contributions to the psychology of ideology formation, bureaucracy, conventionality, and the political process.

Ideology, Conflict, and Leadership in Groups and Organizations

Business & Money

Management & Leadership

In this book a leading psychoanalytic clinician and theoretician presents his thoughts on the latest psychodynamic developments and insights related to treatment of severe personality disorders. Dividing his discussions into two sections, one on psychopathology and the other on psychotherapy, Dr. Otto F. Kernberg examines borderline personality disorder, narcissism, sexual inhibition, transference and countertransference, suicidal behavior, and eating disorders. In each chapter he integrates the ideas of European and Latin American psychoanalytic thinkers, bringing them to the attention of English-speaking readers. 
This book includes a selection of recently published journal articles. Their collection into one volume makes readily available Dr. Kernberg’s present thinking on an important subject.

Aggressivity, Narcissism, and Self-Destructiveness in the Psychotherapeutic Rela: New Developments in the Psychopathology and Psychotherapy of Severe

Psychology & Counseling

No name has been more closely associated with borderline pathology than that of world-renowned psychiatrist Otto D. Kernberg. His conceptualization of borderline personality organization and his ego psychology—object relations approach have broadened the understanding of these difficult patients and pointed the way to a more successful treatment of them. This long-awaited book, based on years of clinical research by Kernberg and his associates, is the first to present his model of psychodynamic psychotherapy with borderline patients.Using abundant clinical vignettes and transcripts, the authors take the reader through the treatment—from establishing the contract through dealing with termination—always explaining the theory that underlies the technique. They describe the phases of treatment, beginning with the most primitive and moving on to working with advanced defenses and transferences. Included are guidelines on such crucial issues as dealing with countertransference, modifying technical neutrality, and handling suicide threats. With its elegant integration of theory and practice and clear explication of treatment strategies, this important book is an essential resource for both beginning and seasoned practitioners.

Psychodynamic Psychotherapy Of Borderline Patients

Selzer, Michael A.

Koenigsberg, Harold W.

Carr, Arthur C.

Applebaum, Ann H.

Basic Books

<div>Otto F. Kernberg is associate chairman and medical director, The New York Hospital--Cornell Medical Center, Westchester Division; Drs. Selzer, Koenigsberg, Carr, and Appelbaum are on the faculty there.</div>

Psychodynamic Psychotherapy For Borderline Patients

"This book contains the most readable and understandable description of BPD from a dynamic perspective that I have ever read. It is an eye-opener and must reading for anyone working with this population. 
This book goes far beyond any other psychodynamic psychotherapy manual that I've read. It not only delves into the relationship and transference, as most do, but gives some straightforward and clear descriptions of very important interventions that are specific to this population. This book breathes fresh air into psychodynamic psychotherapy. It includes not only a description of the pathology that is understandable even to the non-dynamic therapist, it offers rich descriptions of the specific interventions and their indications that can be effective with the borderline patient." —Larry Beutler, Graduate School of Education, University of California "Psychotherapy for Borderline Personality is an excellent guide to the treatment of these difficult and frequently intractable patients who test the mettle of any psychotherapist who attempts the daunting task of engaging them in psychoanalytic psychotherapy. The authors have presented a manual that is practical, lucid, and yet sophisticated." —Hans H. Strupp, Department of Psychology, Vanderbilt University "In this era of demands for greater accountability in documenting the practice and outcomes of psychotherapy, Clarkin, Yeomans, and Kernberg continue to pursue the challenge of making more transparent what often seems elusive in the treatment of patients with borderline personality disorder. They take seriously the obligation to articulate as plainly as possible the theory behind their work and its translation into 'hands-on' practice." —Paul Pilkonis, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine "This book offers us an opportunity to share in [Drs. Clarkin, Yeomans, and Kernberg's] success. It is a must for anyone who works with borderline patients." —Robert Michels, MD, The New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center "This admirable guide's many verbatim examples are organized into an expansion of the well-known and impressively effective Kernberg-style psychotherapy treatment system for borderline patients. If you treat borderline patients in psychotherapy, you need this guide for its high-power focus on the special problems of these patients." —Lester Luborsky, PhD, Department of Psychiatry, University of Pennsylvania Working with a severely reduced emotional palette, the borderline personality inhabits a stark world populated by comic book heroes and villains, victims and destroyers, saints and serpents, endlessly vying for dominance. As any psychotherapist who treats borderline patients knows, entering the fray in an effort to help establish harmony among the warring factions is an undertaking fraught with danger. Even the canniest therapist is at risk of being drawn into the seductive whirlwind of shifting roles and power struggles, only to become another unwitting agent of chaos. What is needed, then, is an approach that provides sufficient clinical structure to contain the destructive forces that can undermine the therapeutic process while remaining flexible enough to allow the therapist the freedom to safely interact with and respond constructively to the roles thrust upon him or her by the patient. This groundbreaking book describes such an approach—transference focused psychotherapy (TFP). TFP is a sophisticated new variant of psychodynamic interventions centering on the analysis of the transference. Its main goal is to bring a patient's unconscious conflicts to the surface so that they can be actively worked through by the client and therapist within a rigorous clinical framework. An elegantly humane yet clinically rigorous approach to interventions with one of the most challenging categories of personality disorders, Psychotherapy for Borderline Personality is an important professional resource for all mental health professionals.

Psychotherapy for Borderline Personality

Yeomans, Frank E.

Clarkin, John F.

wiley

Treating borderline patients is one of the most challenging areas in psychotherapy because of the patient's extreme emotional expressions, the strain it places on the therapist, and the danger of the patient acting out and harming himself or the therapeutic relationship. Many clinicians consider this patient population difficult, if not impossible, to treat. However, in recent years dedicated experts have focused their clinical and research efforts on the borderline patient and have produced treatments that increase our success in working with borderline patients. Transference-Focused Therapy (TFP) is psychodynamic treatment designed especially for borderline patients. This book provides a concise and comprehensive introduction to TFP that will be useful both to experienced clinicians and also to students of psychotherapy. TFP has its roots in object relations and it emphasizes that the transference is the key to understanding and producing change. The patient's internal world of object representations unfolds and is lived in the transference with the therapist. The therapist listens for and makes use of the relationship that is revealed through words, silence, or, as often occurs in the case of individuals with some borderline personality disorder, acting out in subtle or not-so-subtle ways. This primer offers clinicians a way to understand and then use the transference and countertransference for change in the patient.

A Primer of Transference-Focused Psychotherapy for the Borderline Patient

Jason Aronson, Inc.

The basic text for the understanding of patients with pathological narcissism.

Borderline Conditions and Pathological Narcissism