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.
The German psychoanalyst and psychotherapist Joachim Gneist presents with his book Wenn HaßB und Liebe sich umarmen. Das Borderline-Syndrom. Ein Psychodrama unserer Zeit (When Hate and Love Embrace: The Borderline Syndrome. A Psychodrama of our Time) a work committed to enhancing our understanding of borderline personality disorders. In simple, lively and vivid language, he confronts us with what he claims to be “the disease of our culture.” This book comes at a time when we are increasingly challenged to deal with people suffering from borderline personality disorders. The author writes: “People who suffer from a borderline personality syndrome are torn between contradictory, mutually exclusive feelings and tendencies. Their world is constantly full of high tension and they cannot adequately separate themselves from the world around them. Borderline people long for intimacy and warmth, but hurl hatred and rage at the very person who approaches them with affection. They have problems developing their identity, are unable to structure their everyday life and to plan for the future.”
This recently published book is written from the perspective of an empathic and responsive psychotherapist. The author begins with a memory from his own childhood which shows how from early on he could empathise with the subjective world of a fellow human being suffering from a borderline personality disorder. Against this background he offers a convincing approach based on the importance of relationship rather than theory alone in effecting change. In excerpts and brief accounts of therapy sessions the author lets his clients speak of their experience themselves.
Through this device the reader also becomes a listener, engages in an inner dialogue and participates in a process in which the borderline patient makes a step away from isolation and towards social integration. Gneist describes situations from individual and group therapy as well as from supervision sessions. In each case the rol