The borderline adult: therapeutic alliance and transference

Abstract

The author suggests that successful therapy with borderline patients requires the initiation, strengthening, and maturation of the therapeutic alliance as well as the working-through of the patient's difficulty with separation-individuation from the past. He defines a borderline transference as the activation and alternative projection on the therapist of the patient's primitive, split, positive, and negative object relations part-units. In the process of therapy confrontation and, later, interpretation bring these part-units to the patient's awareness, where they can be worked through and the separation-individuation process failure repaired. The therapist who deals with borderline patients must have both personal maturity and professional skill.