Otto F. Kernberg

Otto Kernberg is a towering figure in the field of psychoanalysis and has accomplished seminal work in object relations and the treatment of borderline and narcissistic patients. This volume collects his recent work in several areas: severe personality disorders, couples in conflict, and religious experience. In each area, he explores the relationship between the psychoanalytic, clinical psychiatric, and neurobiological approaches, yielding insights and analysis that are compelling, thought-provoking, and at times startling in their penetrating brilliance. In addition, the book addresses the challenges that psychoanalysis faces in the current medical environment, and the need to strengthen its ties with academic institutions. Beautifully written, the book is designed to both provoke questions and provide enlightenment on a variety of critical issues within psychotherapy. Specifically, the volume: • Explores new approaches to diagnosis and new psychotherapeutic techniques to treat the most severe personality disorders, particularly severe narcissistic psychopathology, based on new research findings;• Relates psychoanalytic theory to neurobiological findings by illuminating the influences of neurobiological structures and intrapsychic conflicts on the development of the personality;• Examines the psychoanalytic and neurobiological underpinnings of sexual love, from the organization of brain structures and neurotransmitters to the overall systems of erotic activation, attachment and bonding. This systematic approach provides insight into the nature of passionate love and the psychodynamic features of the love relationship; • Addresses psychodynamic factors in the religious experience and the search for universal ethical values, and explores the crucial function of religious experience in dealing with the ideological challenges of social life; and• Identifies the serious problems facing psychoanalytic education, institutions, and the profession of psychoanalysis, and proposes solutions to energize the field and increase its contributions to scientific research and progress. In The Inseparable Nature of Love and Aggression: Clinical and Theoretical Perspectives, Kernberg demonstrates his belief that the collaboration of psychoanalysis and neurobiology has the potential to significantly advance our understanding of the human mind. The full spectrum of mental health clinicians, as well as educated general readers, will find this to be a work of creativity and substance.

The Austen Riggs Center is nationally recognized as the leading psychiatric hospital for treatment-resistant patients, who willingly seek help but just cannot respond to treatment. Here, leaders in treating such challenging patients offer a comprehensive psychodynamic approach for treatment and offer hope for recovery. In this book, readers are given an in-depth view into the psychodynamics systems perspective of treatment resistant disorders, with illustrations of the value of including family therapy, and developing and using a psychodynamic treatment team. Also offered is the first description published in book form of the newly-defined area of psychodynamic psychopharmacology—an approach to the use of medications that attends to the meaning of medications to the patient and clinician, as well as to their pharmacologic effects. Important clinical problems such as trauma, psychosis, suicide, family resistant, integrated treatment, and psychopharmacologic failures are covered in detail. Throughout, practical principles are reported in text boxes to help the reader apply learning from Riggs to other outpatient, residential, day treatment, and inpatient settings. The Austen Riggs Center is on the forefront of dealing with difficult-to-treat patients, and this book provides an invaluable resource for both understanding treatment resistance and implementing effective techniques to treat it in clinical practice.

Offering a sophisticated introduction to a contemporary psychodynamic model of the mind and treatment, this book provides an approach to understanding and treating higher level personality pathology. It describes a specific form of treatment called ""dynamic psychotherapy for higher level personality pathology"" (DPHP), which was designed specifically to treat the rigidity that characterizes that condition. Based on psychodynamic object relations theory, DPHP is an outgrowth of transference-focused psychotherapy (TFP) and is part of an integrated approach to psychodynamic treatment of personality pathology across the spectrum of severity - from higher level personality pathology, described in this volume, to severe personality pathology, described in a companion volume, Psychotherapy for Borderline Personality: Focusing on Object Relations. Together, they provide a comprehensive description of an object relations theory-based approach to treatment of personality disorders, embedded in an integrated model of personality. As a guide to treatment, Handbook of Dynamic Psychotherapy for Higher Level Personality Pathology provides a clear, specific, and comprehensive description of how to practice DPHP from beginning to end, presented in jargon-free exposition using extensive clinical illustrations. The authors offer a comprehensive description of psychodynamic consultation that includes sharing the diagnostic impression, establishing treatment goals, discussing treatment options, obtaining informed consent, and establishing treatment frame. Throughout, the book emphasizes fundamental clinical principles that enable the clinician to think through clinical decisions moment-to-moment and also to develop an overall sense of the trajectory and goals of the treatment. Among the book's benefits: ; Takes a diagnosis-driven approach, presenting a clear model of both the psychopathology and its treatment;; Explains underlying theory and basic elements of DPHP for those first learning dynamic therapy;; Offers an integrated, innovative synthesis of contemporary psychodynamic approaches to personality pathology and psychodynamic psychotherapy;; Describes goals, strategies, tactics, and techniques of the treatment to demonstrate its flexibility over a relatively long course of treatment;; Provides sophisticated discussion of integrating dynamic psychotherapy with medication management and other forms of treatment. DPHP offers a broad range of patients the opportunity to modify maladaptive personality functioning in ways that can permanently enhance their quality of life. Handbook of Dynamic Psychotherapy for Higher Level Personality Pathology provides experienced clinicians with a hands-on approach to that method, and is also useful as a primary textbook in courses focusing on the technique of dynamic psychotherapy or in courses on psychodynamics.

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.

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

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

In this work, Dr Kernberg presents his views of normal and pathological narcissism and of the technical complication of these views in respect of applied therapeutic techniques.