The book explores the challenge of treating patients with borderline personality disorder. The instability of their relationships, the intensity of their affective responses, and their proneness to paranoid reactions all contribute to their difficulty in working consistently and constructively in the psychotherapeutic situation.

Borderline Personality Disorder: Tailoring the Psychotherapy to the Patient explores the challenge of treating patients with borderline personality disorder. The book begins with a review of the clinical and research literature pertaining to the treatment of borderline patients. It presents a unique, empirically based intensive study of three borderline patients, using transcripts of audiotaped therapy sessions. The research methodology is reviewed, and clinically oriented descriptions of the three patients, their psychotherapy processes, and their outcomes are included. Following an overall summary of results, conclusions regarding the differential indications for supportive versus expressive emphasis in psychotherapy are discussed.