Am J Psychiatry 1978; 135:437-441
Copyright © 1978 by American Psychiatric Association
The borderline adult: therapeutic alliance and transference
JF Masterson
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.
