Borderline Personality Disorder: Tailoring the Psychotherapy to the Patient

Borderline Personality Disorder: Tailoring the Psychotherapy to the Patient explores the challenge of treating patients with borderline personality disorder. These patients make up a large segment of the difficult-to-treat population. The instability of their relationships, the intensity of their affective responses, and their proneness to paranoid reactions all contribute to their difficulty in working consistently and constructively in the psychotherapeutic situation. When one adds these difficult patient problems to the therapist's quandary about how expressive or supportive to be, therapists are indeed often confronted with a challenging therapeutic task.

The book begins with a review of the clinical and research literature pertaining to the treatment of borderline patients. It presents a unique, empirically based intensive study of three borderline patients, based on transcripts of audiotaped therapy sessions. The research methodology is reviewed, and clinically oriented descriptions of the three patients, their psychotherapy processes, and their outcomes are included. Following an overall summary of results, conclusions regarding the differential indications for supportive versus expressive emphasis in psychotherapy are discussed.

In their research, the authors recorded every psychotherapy session and studied a randomly selected group of sessions. Therefore, the reader is provided with increased insight into what is most effective with what kind of patient at a given point in the therapy process.

Leonard Horwitz, Ph.D., is Training and Supervising Analyst at the Topeka Institute for Psychoanalysis and Director of the Treatment Interventions Project at The Menninger Clinic. He is also Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Kansas School of Medicine, Wichita.

Glen O. Gabbard, M.D., is Professor and Director of the Baylor Psychiatry Clinic at the Baylor College of Medicine and Training and Supervising Analyst at the Houston-Galveston Psychoanalytic Institute in Houston, Texas. He was previously Director of the Menninger Hospital in Topeka, Kansas. Dr. Gabbard is the author or editor of sixteen books and currently is joint Editor-in-Chief and Editor for North America of the International Journal of Psychoanalysis. His numerous awards include the 2000 Mary Sigourney Award for outstanding contributions to psychoanalysis.

Jon G. Allen, Ph.D., is Senior Staff Psychologist in the Trauma Recovery Program at C. F. Menninger Memorial Hospital and Editor of the Bulletin of the Menninger Clinic.

Siebolt H. Frieswyk, Ph.D., is Coordinator of Psychotherapy Training at Karl Menninger School of Psychiatry and Mental Health Sciences and Faculty Member at the Topeka Institute for Psychoanalysis.

Donald B. Colson, Ph.D., is Chief Psychologist at The Menninger Clinic and Graduate of the Topeka Institute for Psychoanalysis.

Gavin E. Newsom, M.S.W., is Chief Social Worker at The Menninger Clinic.

Lolafaye Coyne, Ph.D., is Director of the Statistical Laboratory and Acting Director in the Research Department of The Menninger Clinic.