This volume, by Kernberg and his colleagues, based on a research program at New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center, is presented as a handbook for the psychoanalytically oriented psychotherapy of borderline patients. Based on an ego psychology-object relations conceptualization, the authors' goal is to describe what they regard as the most suitable kind of treatment for this group of patients (including, as well, narcissistic, schizoid, paranoid, “as-if,” hypomanic, and antisocial personalities). The goal is to “enhance the borderline patient's ability to experience self and others as coherent, intergrated, realistically perceived individuals, and to reduce the need to use defenses that weaken ego structure by reducing the repertoire of available responses.” These goals are accomplished by the diagnosis and clarification (leading to interpretation) of the split-off elements