The following abstracts are edited versions of English summaries which appeared in Forum and are published with the permission of the journal.

In this paper Wurmser summarizes the basic experiences he has gathered during many years of working psychoanalytically with severe, yet nonpsychotic forms of psychopathology. In contrast to their conceptualization as “borderline” pathology or as defined in self psychology, these disturbances are viewed by Wurmser as severe neuroses. He focuses on their conflict analysis, stressing particularly the analysis of shame-guilt conflicts and the conjunction of masochism with narcissism. He sketches a genetic layering of masochism useful for the understanding of the analytic process.