Countertransference and Psychotherapeutic Technique: Teaching Seminars on Psychotherapy of the Borderline Adult. James F. Masterson, M.D. New York:  Brunner Mazel, 1983.

For some years now, Masterson has been publishing his ideas on the borderline adolescent and the borderline adult. His is a well worked out developmental viewpoint (Modern Psychoanalysis, Volume II, Number 2) which sees the origin of the borderline patient's problem in the separation/individuation conflict. In this schema the intrapsychic structure of such a patient consists in a split object-relations unit and a split ego. This will have resulted from the mother's having rewarded clinging behavior and withdrawn libidinal supplies when the child made moves toward separation, a reversal of appropriate maternal signalling to a child with normal wishes for exploration and the achievement of ego autonomy. In therapy, clinging and avoidance of individuation become the principal defenses as borderline patients project their split object-relations units and split egos in frantic attempts to ward off abandonment depression. In this model, little emphasis is given to drive theory.

The reader of Masterson's newest book is allowed, so to speak, to attend class with him and be supervised on countertransference