Otto Kernberg is a towering figure in the field of psychoanalysis and has accomplished seminal work in object relations and the treatment of borderline and narcissistic patients. This volume collects his recent work in several areas: severe personality disorders, couples in conflict, and religious experience. In each area, he explores the relationship between the psychoanalytic, clinical psychiatric, and neurobiological approaches, yielding insights and analysis that are compelling, thought-provoking, and at times startling in their penetrating brilliance. In addition, the book addresses the challenges that psychoanalysis faces in the current medical environment, and the need to strengthen its ties with academic institutions. Beautifully written, the book is designed to both provoke questions and provide enlightenment on a variety of critical issues within psychotherapy. Specifically, the volume: Explores new approaches to diagnosis and new psychotherapeutic techniques to treat the most severe personality disorders, particularly severe narcissistic psychopathology, based on new research findings; Relates psychoanalytic theory to neurobiological findings by illuminating the influences of neurobiological structures and intrapsychic conflicts on the development of the personality; Examines the psychoanalytic and neurobiological underpinnings of sexual love, from the organization of brain structures and neurotransmitters to the overall systems of erotic activation, attachment and bonding. This systematic approach provides insight into the nature of passionate love and the psychodynamic features of the love relationship; Addresses psychodynamic factors in the religious experience and the search for universal ethical values, and explores the crucial function of religious experience in dealing with the ideological challenges of social life; and Identifies the serious problems facing psychoanalytic education, institutions, and the profession of psychoanalysis, and proposes solutions to energize the field and increase its contributions to scientific research and progress. In The Inseparable Nature of Love and Aggression: Clinical and Theoretical Perspectives, Kernberg demonstrates his belief that the collaboration of psychoanalysis and neurobiology has the potential to significantly advance our understanding of the human mind. The full spectrum of mental health clinicians, as well as educated general readers, will find this to be a work of creativity and substance.

In this book, Kernberg first distinguishes, then interrelates psychoanalytic, clinical psychiatric, and neurobiological perspectives in a variety of areas, beginning with severe personality disorders and extending to love, destructiveness, mourning, spirituality, and the future of psychoanalytic inquiry. Dr. Kernberg is renowned for his work with borderline and narcissistic patients, and in this book, he offers new approaches to the diagnosis and treatment of the most severe personality disorders, particularly the spectrum of severe narcissistic psychopathology. His effort to relate psychoanalytic to neurobiological findings continues in two fascinating areas -- the study of sexual love and of religious experience -- and he examines object relations theory in relation to these two phenomena. Kernberg's analysis of love and aggression is both bold and nuanced and will captivate the professional psychotherapist as well as the psychologically astute general reader.

In this important new book, Dr. Otto F. Kernberg, one of the world's foremost psychoanalysts, explores the role of aggression in severe personality disorders and in normal and perverse sexuality, integrating new developments in psychoanalytic theory with findings from clinical work with severely regressed patients. The book also integrates Dr. Kernberg's recent studies of the descriptive, structural, and psychodynamic features of problems stemming from pathological aggression with the vicissitudes of their psychoanalytic treatment. Finally, Dr. Kernberg demonstrates the importance of differential diagnosis for effective psychoanalytically inspired treatment of these disorders, providing a rich variety of clinical illustrations. The book begins by relating the dual-drive theory of libido and aggression to contemporary developments in affect theory. Dr. Kernberg then applies this general theory of affects to aggression, which in its pathological form centers on the affect of hatred. He analyzes sado-masochistic, hysterical-hysteroid, and narcissistic-antisocial spectrums of personality disorders, emphasizing how aggression is structured in each group. Dr. Kernberg next describes and updates the theoretical frame underlying his approach to the treatment of these disorders, outlines their clinical manifestations, and illustrates their diagnosis and treatment, ranging from standard psychoanalysis with infantile personalities, to psychoanalytic psychotherapy with borderline personalities, to the psychotherapeutic approach to the treatment of psychosis and hospital milieu treatment in the management of highly regressed patients. In the final section, Dr. Kernberg links the findings from psychoanalytic approaches to personality disorders with those from the psychoanalytic study of sexual perversions.

In this important book, one of the world's foremost psychoanalysts provides the clinician with tools to diagnose and treat severe cases of personality disorder, including borderline and narcissistic structures. Dr. Kernberg not only describes techniques he has found useful in clinical practice but also further develops theories formulated in his previous work and critically reviews other recent contributions. "A splendid book . . . of great value for anyone involved in psychotherapy with patients suffering from one or another variety of personality disorder, as well as for anyone who is teaching or doing research in this field. . . . An outstandingly fine and valuable book.--Harold F. Searles, M.D., Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease "Kernberg is a synthesizing, creative eclectic on the contemporary psychoanalytic and psychodynamic scene, broadly based in theory and in practice, a powerful intelligence, a prolific writer, and a man of ideas....This is a challenging and provocative book."--Alan A. Stone, M.D., American Journal of Psychiatry "A major work that brings together in one volume a host of clinical insights into people with a variety of severe personality disorders.... Anyone who has attempted to work with patients with severe personality disorders will be rewarding by studying this book." --Robert D. Gillman, Psychoanalytic Quarterly

The basic text for the understanding of patients with pathological narcissism.

In Treatment of Severe Personality Disorders: Resolution of Aggression and Recovery of Eroticism, the influential psychoanalyst and psychiatrist Otto Kernberg presents an integrated update of the current knowledge of personality disorders, their neurobiological and psychodynamic determinants, and a specific psychodynamic psychotherapy geared to resolve the psychopathology of these conditions -- namely, the syndrome of identity diffusion and its influence on the capacity for emotional wellbeing and gratifying relationships with significant others. The author updates the findings of the Personality Disorders Institute of the Weill Cornell Medical College Department of Psychiatry, which are derived from the empirical research and clinical investigation of severe personality disorders, and addresses the effectiveness of transference-focused psychotherapy, a specific psychodynamic treatment for these disorders developed at the Institute. The volume focuses particularly on an essential group of techniques common to all psychoanalytically derived treatments and clarifies the corresponding differential features of various psychodynamic treatment approaches. In prose both precise and evocative, the author: Examines the classification of personality disorders, the way competing viewpoints have influenced the evolution of DSM-III and DSM-IV, and the impact of new knowledge on the classification of DSM-5, with emphasis on how conflicts between scientific and political considerations have hindered the classification of personality disorders in the past. Illustrates in detail how present knowledge of neurobiological structures and neurotransmitters intertwines with the psychodynamic determinants of how psychic experience is organized. Explores psychodynamic psychotherapies and contemporary developments and controversies in the field. For example, the role of interpretation in borderline pathology is examined using a clinical case, and a new formulation of supportive psychodynamic psychotherapy is described. Addresses severe narcissistic pathology -- its diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment. Specifically, the book presents an overview of treatment options for severe narcissistic personality disorder, explores the distortions in verbal communication that may arise during psychotherapy with these patients, and focuses on the differential diagnosis of antisocial behavior. Examines the diagnosis and treatment of sexual pathology, and explores the vicissitudes of the love lives of patients with severe personality disorders. Concludes with a chapter on the essential preconditions in the education of psychodynamic psychotherapists to carry out the challenging and complex psychotherapeutic work in this field. In describing both the limits and the advances in therapeutic effectiveness, the Treatment of Severe Personality Disorders: Resolution of Aggression and Recovery of Eroticism performs a great service, and it will surely become a classic of the psychoanalytic literature.

The negative interactions that take place between dating and courting partners, most notably physical aggression and sexual exploitation, are explored in this volume. The authors blend qualitative interviews with current research findings.

Internationally renowned psychoanalytic theorist and clinician Dr. Otto Kernberg here examines the success and failure of sexual love in couples, from adolescence to old age. Dr. Kernberg considers both "normal" and pathological relationships, including the role of narcissism, masochism, and aggression in each. The result expands the boundaries of our current understanding of love relations.

Two innovative spiritual teachers show how to use desire and passion—eros—as a gateway to realizing our fullest potential What do desire and passion have to do with our spiritual journey? According to A. H. Almaas and Karen Johnson, they are an essential part of it. Conventional wisdom cautions that desire and passion are opposed to the spiritual path—that engaging in desire will take you more into the world, into egoic life. And for most people, that is exactly what happens. We naturally tend to experience wanting in a self-centered way. The Power of Divine Eros challenges the view that the divine and the erotic are separate. When we open to the energy, aliveness, spontaneity, and zest of erotic love, we will find it inseparable from the realm of the holy and sacred. When this is understood, desire and passion become a gateway to wholeness and to realizing our full potential. Through guided exercises, the authors reveal how our relationships become opportunities on the spiritual journey to express ourselves authentically, to relate with openness, and to discover dynamic inner realms with another person. Through embodying the energy of eros, each of us can learn to be fully real and alive in all of our interactions.