Hatred, Emptiness, and Hope: Transference-Focused Psychotherapy in Personality Disorders

In this important new volume, Otto F. Kernberg, M.D., of Weill Cornell Medical College, offers an updated vision of psychoanalytic object relations theory, revealing its application to transference-focused psychotherapy (TFP), a treatment approach derived from, and related to, psychoanalysis.

Collecting previously published articles and new material based on empirical studies carried out by the Personality Disorders Institute of Weill Cornell, the book illustrates TFP’s applicability in scenarios that include:

• Schizoid personality disorders
• Psychotic personality organization
• Disturbances in sexuality and love relations in cases of narcissistic personalities
• Inpatient hospital treatment
• Large group regression in organizational and political settings as a consequence of malignant narcissism

Hatred, Emptiness, and Hope also devotes a chapter to the implications of new developments in neurobiology on psychoanalytic object relations theory, examining the relationship between neurobiological dispositions and their interaction with psychodynamic developments.

Besides offering a detailed look at the application of TFP to severe personality disorders, this book also examines the practice of TFP itself, tackling controversial issues regarding the supervision of psychoanalysis and its derived psychotherapies, the challenges for the future of psychoanalysis, and innovations that may serve to strengthen its role as a profession, a treatment approach and a social organization within mental health sciences.