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Volkan's book joins the ever-growing bibliography addressing intensive psychotherapy of borderline patients (Wolberg, 1973); (Kernberg, 1975); (Masterson, 1976); (Chessick, 1977); (Giovacchini, 1979); (Abend et al., 1983); (Adler, 1985); (Searles, 1986); (Waldinger and Gunderson, 1987); (Kernberg et al., 1989). All of these books have offered psychoanalytic perspectives on the internal life of borderline patients and implicitly encouraged the enthusiasm and optimism upon which a current generation of psychotherapists rests its valiant commitments. As we place Volkan's book beside these others, we will note that it shares many of their same assets and limitations.
The title—Six Steps in the Treatment of Borderline Organization—and Volkan's primary contribution is the effort to explicate the steps traversed when successful therapies of borderline patients occur. This is an important undertaking because it gives therapists, as well as patients, a means of evaluating whether their work is progressing or is