Management of Countertransference with Borderline Patients / Edition 1

by Glen O. Gabbard MD, Sallye M. Wilkinson

Overview

Management of Countertransference with Borderline Patients is an open and detailed discussion of the emotional reactions that clinicians experience when treating borderline patients. This book provides a systematic approach to managing countertransference that legitimizes the therapist's reactions and shows ways to use them therapeutically with the patient.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780765702630
Publisher:	Aronson, Jason Inc.
Publication date:	10/01/2000
Edition description:	1 PBK ED
Pages:	254
Product dimensions:	6.30(w) x 9.02(h) x 0.76(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Glen O. Gabbard, M.D., is Bessie Walker Callaway Distinguished Professor of Psychoanalysis and Education in the Karl Menninger School of Psychiatry and Mental Health Sciences at The Menninger Clinic in Topeka, Kansas. He is also director of the Topeka Institute for Psychoanalysis, where he is a training and supervising analyst, and clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of Kansas School of Medicine. Sallye M. Wilkinson, Ph.D., is a psychoanalyst and Senior Psychologist at the Menninger Clinic. She teaches in the Karl Menninger School for Psychiatry and the Topeka Institute for Psychoanalysis.

Table of Contents

	Source Acknowledgments	ix
	Introduction	xi
1	Overview of Countertransference With Borderline Patients	1
2	Establishment of Optimal Distance	25
3	On Victims, Rescuers, and Abusers	47
4	On Holding, Containment, and Thinking One's Own Thoughts	71
5	Reactions to Rage and Hatred	91
6	Sexual Feelings and Gender Issues	119
7	Use of Therapist Self-Disclosure	143
8	Splitting	173
9	Supervision and Consultation	199
10	Therapeutic Aspects of Managing Countertransference	225
	Index	245

What People are Saying About This

Harold Searles, M.D.

Gabbard and Wilkinson have written a book of such lucidity, clinical soundness, and highly readable scholarliness that it deserves to become a standard and enduring textbook for anyone involved in doing individual psychotherapy with borderline patients…. the lucidity with which they write is such that the reader need not be a psychoanalyst, nor a candidate in any analytic institute, to make good use of their teaching. Furthermore, practitioners… will find, here, illumination and enrichment. I personally have learned much from my reading of this book by Gabbard and Wilkinson.

Thomas H. Ogden

Management of Countertransference with Borderline Patients is a masterful work. Gabbard and Wilkinson write with elegant simplicity and yet with great clinical and theoretical sophistication bringing to bear the most advanced conceptions of primitive mental processes and intersubjective phenomena…. This book is a major contribution to the development of our understanding of the treatment of borderline patients. It will be of good interest to all clinicians working with borderline patients whether the therapist is a beginning student or an experienced practitioner.
— Thomas H. Ogden, M.D., author of The Primitive Edge of Experience and Matrix of the Mind , Supervising Analyst, Psychoanalytic Institute of Northern California, Co-Director, Center for the Advanced Study of the Psychoses

Editorial Reviews

Gabbard and Wilkinson have written a book of such lucidity, clinical soundness, and highly readable scholarliness that it deserves to become a standard and enduring textbook for anyone involved in doing individual psychotherapy with borderline patients. The variety of individual therapy that they portray is psychoanalytic therapy, but the lucidity with which they write is such that the reader need not be a psychoanalyst, nor a candidate in an analytic institute, to make good use of their teaching. Furthermore, practitioners of even many years of experience in this field will find, here, illumination and enrichment. I personally have learned much from reading this book.

Harold F. Searles

There have been many fine books on the borderline personality, but this is the first work that intelligently addresses the effect of borderline patients on the psychotherapist or psychoanalyst who works with them. It is a profoundly informative, vivid, and compelling read, because the authors have skillfully inserted riveting clinical vignettes that evoke the presence of the personality they address, thereby establishing a rather remarkable triangular drama: this extraordinary patient, contemporary psychoanalytic theories on the borderline patient, and the clinician who must carry his patient and his own beset-upon self to psychic change and well-being.

Christopher Bollas

Management of Countertransference with Borderline Patients is a masterful work. Gabbard and Wilkinson write with elegant simplicity and yet with great clinical and theoretical sophistication, bringing to bear the most advanced conceptions of primitive mental processes and intersubjective phenomena. It is a rare event indeed to find clinical accounts of the richness of those included in this volume. Gabbard and Wilkinson present the details of their moment-to-moment experience with the patient and their methods of attempting to make sense of their own thoughts, feelings, fantasies, and sensations in the service of developing an understanding of the internal world of the patient. This book is a major contribution to the development of our understanding of the treatment of borderline patients. It will be of great interest to all clinicians working with borderline patients, whether the therapist is a beginning student or an experienced practitioner.

Thomas H. Ogden

There have been many fine books on the borderline personality, but this is the first work that intelligently addresses the effect of borderline patients on the psychotherapist or psychoanalyst who works with them. It is a profoundly informative, vivid, and compelling read, because the authors have skillfully inserted riveting clinical vignettes that evoke the presence of the personality they address, thereby establishing a rather remarkable triangular drama: this extraordinary patient, contemporary psychoanalytic theories on the borderline patient, and the clinician who must carry his patient and his own beset-upon self to psychic change and well-being.

Christopher Bollas Ph.D.

Management of Countertransference with Borderline Patients is a masterful work. Gabbard and Wilkinson write with elegant simplicity and yet with great clinical and theoretical sophistication, bringing to bear the most advanced conceptions of primitive mental processes and intersubjective phenomena. It is a rare event indeed to find clinical accounts of the richness of those included in this volume. Gabbard and Wilkinson present the details of their moment-to-moment experience with the patient and their methods of attempting to make sense of their own thoughts, feelings, fantasies, and sensations in the service of developing an understanding of the internal world of the patient. This book is a major contribution to the development of our understanding of the treatment of borderline patients. It will be of great interest to all clinicians working with borderline patients, whether the therapist is a beginning student or an experienced practitioner.

Gabbard and Wilkinson have written a book of such lucidity, clinical soundness, and highly readable scholarliness that it deserves to become a standard and enduring textbook for anyone involved in doing individual psychotherapy with borderline patients. The variety of individual therapy that they portray is psychoanalytic therapy, but the lucidity with which they write is such that the reader need not be a psychoanalyst, nor a candidate in an analytic institute, to make good use of their teaching. Furthermore, practitioners of even many years of experience in this field will find, here, illumination and enrichment. I personally have learned much from reading this book.

There have been many fine books on the borderline personality, but this is the first work that intelligently addresses the effect of borderline patients on the psychotherapist or psychoanalyst who works with them. It is a profoundly informative, vivid, and compelling read, because the authors have skillfully inserted riveting clinical vignettes that evoke the presence of the personality they address, thereby establishing a rather remarkable triangular drama: this extraordinary patient, contemporary psychoanalytic theories on the borderline patient, and the clinician who must carry his patient and his own beset-upon self to psychic change and well-being.

From the Publisher

A detailed discussion of the emotional reactions that clinicians experience when treating borderline patients. The volume provides a systematic approach to managing countertransference that legitimizes the therapist's reactions and shows ways to use them therapeutically with the patient. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

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