Aggressivity Narcissism And Self Destructiveness In The Psychotherapeutic Rela New Developments In The Psychopathology And Psychotherapy Of Severe

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.

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.

Boards of directors are complex systems, and it is imperative to understand what the contextual forces are that shape the direction and make-up of boards. This Research Handbook provides inspiration for researchers and practitioners interested in the manifold dimensions and facets of context surrounding boards of directors.

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.

The book explores the concepts of personality in the context of its neurobiological and intrapsychic determinants, proposes a new classification and new methods of psychotherapeutic interventions, expands the analysis of severe narcissistic pathology, and details the many complications in the sexual life of patients with personality disorders.

Patients that have significant narcissistic personality pathology are challenging to most therapists. Student therapists often find that treating such patients is particularly difficult. Not only do such patients challenge the therapist's conceptualization and empathic skills, but they also evoke strong feelings toward the patient, a phenomenon known as countertransference, which can be personally unnerving. However, countertransference can be used as a tool in better understanding one's patient and how to best intervene with him or her. This book sets out to accomplish three major objectives. First, it describes narcissistic pathology from a psychoanalytic and psychodynamic perspective, which allows therapists to have a meaningful framework from which to think about their patients' problems and work with them. Second, it discusses how countertransference can be understood as a useful therapeutic tool. Third, it presents four case studies from doctoral students in various stages of their clinical training and how they came to understand and work with their patients in therapeutically effective ways by managing and understanding their countertransference reactions. In the end, it is hoped that the reader will see that, while they may be challenging at times, narcissistic patients can be effectively treated if therapists have a meaningful theoretical framework from which to think about their patients and can become comfortable with their own inner lives as they relate to their patients.

In this book, Kernberg first distinguishes, then interrelates psychoanalytic, clinical psychiatric, and neurobiological perspectives in a variety of areas, beginning with severe personality disorders and extending to love, destructiveness, mourning, spirituality, and the future of psychoanalytic inquiry. Dr. Kernberg is renowned for his work with borderline and narcissistic patients, and in this book, he offers new approaches to the diagnosis and treatment of the most severe personality disorders, particularly the spectrum of severe narcissistic psychopathology. His effort to relate psychoanalytic to neurobiological findings continues in two fascinating areas -- the study of sexual love and of religious experience -- and he examines object relations theory in relation to these two phenomena. Kernberg's analysis of love and aggression is both bold and nuanced and will captivate the professional psychotherapist as well as the psychologically astute general reader.

Filling a crucial gap in the clinical literature, this book provides a contemporary view of pathological narcissism and presents an innovative treatment approach. The preeminent authors explore the special challenges of treating patients--with narcissistic traits or narcissistic personality disorder--who retreat from reality into narcissistic grandiosity, thereby compromising their lives and relationships. Assessment procedures and therapeutic strategies have been adapted from transference-focused psychotherapy (TFP), a manualized, evidence-based treatment for borderline personality disorder. Rich case material illustrates how TFP-N enables the clinician to engage patients more deeply in therapy and help them overcome relationship and behavioral problems at different levels of severity. The volume integrates psychodynamic theory and research with findings from social cognition, attachment, and neurobiology.