Concept
Transference-focused psychotherapy
A psychoanalytic psychotherapy, set out in a treatment manual, for patients with borderline personality organization, developed by Otto Kernberg with John Clarkin, Frank Yeomans and colleagues at Cornell. Within a firm treatment contract, usually with two sessions a week, the therapist follows the dominant patterns of relating as they appear in the transference and interprets the split images of self and other behind them, aiming to integrate those images and so overcome identity diffusion.
- Introduced by
- Otto F. Kernberg
- Key works
- 1
introduced by
- Otto F. Kernberg 1999 With John Clarkin and Frank Yeomans at Cornell, Kernberg turned his psychoanalytic treatment of borderline patients into a manualised method, first published as Psychotherapy for Borderline Personality (1999).
derives from
- Borderline personality organization Transference-focused psychotherapy was built as the treatment for borderline personality organization: its aim of integrating split images of self and others follows directly from the structural account of the disorder.