A Primer of Transference-Focused Psychotherapy for the Borderline Patient

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.
About the Author: Frank E. Yeomans, M.D., Ph.D., is Clinical Associate Professor of Psychiatry at the Weill Medical College of Cornell University and Co-Director of Training and Senior Supervisor at the Personality Disorders Institute at the New York Presbyterian Hospital, Westchester Division. In addition to private practice in New York City and White Plains, NY, Dr. Yeomans teaches and supervises Transference-Focused Psychother-apy in Quebec, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and Germany. John F. Clarkin, Ph.D., is a Professor of Clinical Psychology, Department of Psychiatry at the Weill Medical College of Cornell University and the Co-Director of the Personality Disorders Institute and the Director of Psychology at Cornell Medical Center. Dr. Clarkin is on the Research Faculty and is a Lecturer at Columbia University's Psychoanalytic Center. His research publications are on the phenomenology of personality disorders, especially borderline personality disorder. For the last twelve years, he has directed a large scale clinical study of the effect of psychodynamic psychotherapy with severely disturbed borderline personality disorder patients. Otto F. Kernberg, M.D., F.A.P.A., is Director of the Personality Disorders Institute at The New York Presbyterian Hospital, Westchester Division and Professor of Psychiatry at the Weill Medical College of Cornell University. Dr. Kernberg is Past President of the International Psychoanalytic Association and also Training and Supervising Analyst of the Columbia University Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research. From 1976 to 1995 he was Associate Chairman and Medical Director of The New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center, Westchester Division. He was elected Doctor Honoris Causa by the University of Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 1998, and received the 1999 Austrian Cross of Honor for Science and Art.