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The Kris Study Group of the New York Psychoanalytic Institute, under the chairmanship of Dr Charles Brenner, spent four years reviewing the concept of borderline states. There was not much they managed to agree on, but their disagreement has helped to clarify the situation and the attempt was well worth while. There appeared to be one common factor, and a rather surprising one. This was the constitutional strength of these patients which evidently enabled them to maintain their condition over a long period without deterioration.
As little agreement was reached through discussion, it was decided to study four case histories in detail. These are well presented and certainly make up the most useful and most readable section of the book (though only a fifth of its volume). All these patients, not surprisingly, had inadequate and disturbed parents, especially fathers, and sexual material is quite obvious (was it what the analysts wanted?). Countertransference was mainly negative, intended to make the analysts feel what the patients felt as children; indeed in most cases the analysts suggested terminating treatment (or offering alternative consultation), resulting in a quite marked change in the course of the analysis. The technique of this seems open to discussion—the choice between open anger and early termination or both and the pros and cons of the method adopted.
The authors feel that it is not possible to separate preocdipal and oedipal traumata in the analysis of adults. Not only are oedipal conflicts clear but pre-oedipal issues arise in relation to mothers with parental separation anxieties of their own. Those are less emphasised, possibly because paternal transferences are so intense—all the analysts were male. Very slow improvements occur outside while the analyses continue to deal with negative feeling states. The strength of the patients seem not to be estimated in the four case reports, and if their strength was constitutional, one would like to know how this