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My aim here is to consider Kernberg's “Therapeutic Implications of Transference Structures in Various Personality Pathologies” from the vantage point of psychodynamic psychotherapy research. That Kernberg's work lends itself to evaluation from an empirical perspective speaks to the ways in which he is uniquely situated in the psychoanalytic community.
More than any major psychoanalytic theorist, Kernberg has distinguished himself by creating the circumstances under which his clinical perspective may be subject to empirical evaluation. In collaboration with colleagues, Kernberg has manualized his treatment model (Yeomans, Clarkin, and Kernberg 2015). Unlike psychotherapy manuals that dictate the focus of given sessions, such as those typically used in CBT approaches, Kernberg and colleagues have articulated the broad strokes of the tactics, techniques, and strategies of a transference-focused treatment approach to be applied flexibly according to the nature of the patient's pathology and the dynamics of the patient/therapist dyad. They have subjected this treatment to empirical evaluation; through several randomized clinical trials (RCTs), transference-focused psychotherapy (TFP) has demonstrated its efficacy in the treatment of borderline personality disorder (BPD) (Clarkin et al. 2007; Doering et al. 2010).
In an RCT comparing TFP to treatment by experienced community psychotherapists, TFP demonstrated significantly greater reductions in BPD symptoms and inpatient admissions, and greater gains in patients' level of personality organization and psychosocial functioning (Doering et al. 2010).