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.
If ever a psychiatric center was to be honored for its superb clinical resources, dedicated research tradition, and long history with borderline patients, the Menninger Clinic would have to top the list of nominees. For the past half-century the unique nature of the setting has made it a magnet for treatment-resistant patients too mercurial to be considered simply neurotic and suitable for customary outpatient analytic practice, though not clearly psychotic even if at times they behave so (Knight 1953). From Rapaport, Gill, and Schafer's reincarnation of diagnostic psychological testing (1945), through its herculean thirty-year Psychotherapy Research Project (Wallerstein 1986), the clinic has been immersed the attempt to understand and treat borderline psychopathology. Kernberg's classic paper, “Borderline Personality Organization” (1967), itself an early contribution of the PRP, arguably catalyzed worldwide interest in borderline disorders. The authors of the present book are longtime participants in the clinical and research work of the clinic; the senior author, Leonard Horwitz, was a major participant in the PRP and provided the first individual clinical case account of its findings (Horwitz 1974). Long the champion of a clinical research tradition, he has developed a special interest in borderline patients and come to believe in the importance of support in their treatment.
Borderline Personality Disorder is an interesting and unique book. It is the report of a research project aimed at addressing current controversies about the degree of expressiveness and supportiveness optimal in the treatment of borderline patients, and at helping clinicians