The book is a psychoanalytic understanding of psychosis as a particular organisation of the personality, based on 'psychotic personality' (Bion) and 'pathological organisations' (Steiner). The theoretical development is traced through Freud, Klein and Bion, along with contemporary Kleinian authors. An important role is granted to psychic pain as the cornerstone of psychopathology, and particularly to the psychotic patient's difficulties in dealing with it. Bion's distinction between "feeling psychic pain and suffering it" is considered an indicator when evaluating the patient's ability to cope with psychoanalytic treatment. The author's experience with a schizophrenic patient is related in detail, offering a view of the patient and her relationship with the analyst from various different angles, and showing how the psychoanalytic method can be used to treat psychosis.

This acclaimed clinical guide and widely adopted text has filled a key need in the field since its original publication. Nancy McWilliams makes psychoanalytic personality theory and its implications for practice accessible to practitioners of all levels of experience. She explains major character types and demonstrates specific ways that understanding the patient's individual personality structure can influence the therapist's focus and style of intervention. Guidelines are provided for developing a systematic yet flexible diagnostic formulation and using it to inform treatment. Highly readable, the book features a wealth of illustrative clinical examples. New to This Edition *Reflects the ongoing development of the author's approach over nearly two decades. *Incorporates important advances in attachment theory, neuroscience, and the study of trauma. *Coverage of the contemporary relational movement in psychoanalysis. Winner--Canadian Psychological Association's Goethe Award for Psychoanalytic and Psychodynamic Scholarship

Essentially clinical in its approach, Psychic Retreats discusses the problem of patients who are 'stuck' and with whom it is difficult to make meaningful contact. John Steiner, an experienced psychoanalyst, uses new developments in Kleinian theory to explain how this happens. He examines the way object relationships and defences can be organized into complex structures which lead to a personality and an analysis becoming rigid and stuck, with little opportunity for development or change. These systems of defences are pathological organisations of the personality: John Steiner describes them as 'psychic retreats', into which the patient can withdraw to avoid contact both with the analyst and with reality. To provide a background to these original and controversial concepts, the author builds on more established ideas such as Klein's distinction between the paranoid-schizoid and depressive positions, and briefly reviews previous work on pathological organizations of the personality. He illustrates his discussion with detailed clinical material, with examples of the way psychic retreats operate to provide a respite from both paranoid-schizoid and depressive anxieties. He looks at the way such organizations function as a defence against unbearable guilt and describes the mechanism by which fragmentation of the personality can be reversed so the lost parts of the self can be regained and reintegrated in to the personality. Psychic Retreats is written with the practising psychoanalysts and psychoanalytic psychotherapists in mind. The emphasis is therefore clinical throughout the book, which concludes with a chapter on the technical problems which arise in the treatment of such severely ill patients.

The Psychotic: Aspects of the Personality presents the results of the author's many years of experience as an analyst working with deeply disturbed or psychotic patients, and demonstrates how the deeply resulting clinical and theoretical formulations may additionally be applied to less disturbed patients. Dealing with the theory and clinical treatment of the psychotic aspects of the personality, includes a review of the literature and a rich array of clinical material to illustrate the author's technical approach. A chapter devoted to the survivors of concentration camps shows how the concept of encapsulated autistic nuclei leads to new diagnostic and technical procedures, while a further paper discusses the psychotic difficulties attending heart-transplant surgery. Further essays illuminate the importance of the accurate detection and the use of the countertransference and the significance of the supervisor's supportive role in severe cases.

This volume sets out clear recommendations for healthcare staff on how to diagnose and manage young people and adults who have borderlin personality disorder, in order to significantly improve their treatment and care. The accompanying CD-ROM contains all of the evidence on which the recommendations are based.

In the first book to argue that neurotic, psychotic, and borderline personality disorders can be identified, diagnosed, and treated even in the young, a renowned child psychiatrist marshalls her developmental perspective and adduces clinical evidence to support it. Kernberg and her colleagues elucidate assessment criteria and advance therapeutic approaches for each disorder.