PSYCHOANALYTIC PSYCHOTHERAPY OF The Borderline Patient Arlene Robbins Wolberg Copyright © 1982 Arlene Robbins Wolberg e-Book Copyright © 2014 International Psychotherapy Institute All Rights Reserved This e-book contains material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. This e-book is intended for personal use only. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of this book may be used in any commercial manner without express permission of the author. Scholarly use of quotations must have proper attribution to the published work. This work may not be deconstructed, reverse engineered or reproduced in any other format. Created in the United States of America For information regarding this book, contact the publisher: International Psychotherapy Institute E-Books 301-215-7377 6612 Kennedy Drive Chevy Chase, MD 20815-6504 www.freepsychotherapybooks.org
[email protected] To Michael Lisa David Michael Preface Although borderline conditions have been with us for as long as any other emotional ailment, it is only recently that attention has been concen trated on this syndrome. Reasons for this focus are sundry. More and more psychotherapists have become aware of the vast multitudes of pa tients seeking help who possess a diversity of complaints but who cannot be pigeonholed in any distinctive diagnostic category. Symptoms come and go, fluctuating from evanescent paranoidal projections to obsessive-com pulsive maneuvers, to anxiety manifestations, to depression, to conversion phenomena, to distortion phenomena (fantasy defenses), and to temporary psychotic episodes. Moreover, the sadomasochistic relationships established by these patients have made therapy arduous and frequently unsuccessful. The challenge posed by the borderline malady that disables such great numbers of our population has promoted increasing empirical studies and has yielded a vast literature with craftily fabricated theories that espouse many contradictory themes.