You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
By providing the reader an overview of the diverse viewpoints and approaches to issues of diagnosis, etiology, and treatment of patients with borderline personality disorder, these volumes make an important contribution to this complex field. The editors have included clinicians and theoreticians representing the many different perspectives in the current literature, highlighting areas of convergence and controversy in psychobiological and psychodynamic approaches. Beginning readers will find many areas clarified, while experienced readers should be prepared to have their own biases challenged.
The two-volume set is divided into five parts, each beginning with a brief summary of the contributions of each author. Volume I includes three sections: the first has seven chapters on diagnostic issues; the second, seven chapters on psychodynamic and developmental formulations; and the third, five chapters on biological and genetic formulations. The two sections of Volume II focus on treatment issues; nine chapters deal with psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic psychotherapy, and eight present a variety of alternative treatment approaches. At the beginning of each volume, the editors organize the material by outlining a series of key questions paralleling the sections and chapters. Each volume ends with a summary chapter by the editors organized around these questions. Rather than providing answers themselves, they summarize the various answers (and attempted answers) of the contributors, and refer the reader to other relevant authors.
The goal of the first section, largely accomplished, is to identify the various diagnostic schemata present in the literature and the ways in which they overlap. In the second chapter, for instance, Michael Stone summarizes in a clear and concise manner the four major ways in which borderline psychopathology is conceptualized: (1) as a level of function; (2) as a syndrome (phenomenology); (3) as a personality disorder (DSM-III); (4) as an attenuat