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Dr. Orcutt's remarkable new book, The Unanswered Self, provides a needed overview of the work of the pioneering psychiatrist, James F. Masterson. Dr. Orcutt's ambitious and comprehensive volume offers not only a close summary of Masterson's evolving theory of personality disorder, but also an enriched understanding of Masterson's decades of research, brought to life with extensive clinical illustrations. The book serves as an excellent entry point to Masterson's theory and practice, which will no doubt encourage further study of Masterson's significant contribution as it has been developed through his 15 sequential volumes and International Masterson Institute outposts throughout the world.
Although traditional psychoanalytic theory and practice had mostly considered the personality-disordered person as “untreatable,” Masterson took on the challenge and became a leading authority in establishing the treatment of personality disorder as a focal concern for psychoanalytic psychotherapy. His work took him from groundbreaking interventions with borderline adolescents at Payne Whitney Psychiatric Clinic, New York Hospital, to the founding of an international institute dedicated to studying and treating the full spectrum of personality disorders.
Candace Orcutt, an associate of Masterson's for 20 years, was one of a group of experienced therapists further trained by him to become the core of a growing institute dedicated to the teaching and practice of his approach. As a participant in this process, Dr. Orcutt is uniquely positioned to chronicle the development of Masterson's ideas and illustrate their clinical application in case histories she has presented at institute centers in New York, Cape Town, and Istanbul, and has contributed to Masterson's publications.
Masterson's approach, always clinically directed, is founded on an integration of object relations theory (notably Klein, Fairbairn,
and Winnicott) with studies of child development (Mahler, Bowlby). Eventually,