You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
As is well-known, the psychopathology situated between the levels of psychosis and neurosis has been the object of intense psychoanalytic study since the 70's. The Scandinavian authors best known in this field are Björn Killingmo and Veikko Tähkä. Killingmo and Tähkä, who wrote on borderline pathology in the 80's and 90's, have in many respects a converging view: from a well elaborated theoretical stance, they circumscribe the structural deficits in these patients, at the same time as defining the therapeutic instrument fruitful in these conditions-in different phrases they show how these analysands do not benefit from classical interpretations, but from an affirmative, empathic description of the patient's experience. Both Killingmo and Tähkä have a background in academic research and ego psychology, but they have also both built a new theory in which the structural point of view has been integrated with an object relations perspective. Both have supplied new findings in what works with borderline patients, and why.
The background of Judy Gammelgaard shows some similarities, but also differences, in comparison with Killingmo and Tähkä. Like her senior colleagues, Gammelgaard has many years of experience in academic teaching-she has worked both as Senior Lecturer and Professor at the unit of Psychology at the University of Copenhagen. Her theoretical background as well as main interests are, though, different from those of Killingmo and Tähkä. Two things are characteristic for the thinking and work of Judy Gammelgaard. First, she takes her departure from Freudian metapsychology. Her reading of this theory is in the vein of Continental thought, close to the psychoanalytic tradition in France. Second, Gammelgaard has in her writings been more bent to applied psychoanalysis than to the psychoanalytic clinic. Her doctoral thesis was a study on the concept of catharsis in Greek antique drama and psychoanalysis, and her last book (which dealt with empathy) was also to a la