Personality disorders, Personality disorders--Treatment, Identification (Psychology), Personality Disorders--therapy, Psychoanalytic Therapy--methods 

This book integrates psychiatry and psychoanalysis to present deeper and sounder clinical profiles of the personality disorders than have been hitherto available. Editorial Reviews Review This outstanding book by Dr. Akhtar offers a fresh and novel classification of severe personality disorders. He meticulously outlines the characteristics of each of the severe personality disorders and desribes in encyclopedic fashion the technical issues pertaining to their treatment, making this book a valuable desk reference for students as well as for seasoned clinicians. (Vamık D. Volkan, University of Virginia, author of "Enemies on the Couch: A Psychopolitical Journey Through War and Peace") This encyclopedic text is most impressive in its ability to organize all the personality disorders in a modern dimensional system while still retaining the nosological categories that emphasize the centrality of identity disturbances and splitting for the more severe forms. Utilizing his wide net of past and present papers and a clear and very readable style, Akhtar has combined the descriptive and dynamic without sacrificing depth of conceptualization for clarity. A wonderful work. (Melvin Singer) From the Back Cover This landmark volume synthesizes the vast descriptive and dynamic literature on the phenomenology and treatment of severe personality disorders. Among the psychoanalytic authors whose views are included are: . the "pioneers" such as Freud, Abraham, Ferenczi, Jones, Fenichel, and Reich; the "second generation" analysts such as Klein, Anna Freud, Fairbairn, Balint, Winnicott, Guntrip, Erikson, Waelder, Greenacre, Jacobson, Menninger, and Eissler; and the contemporary theorists such as Mahler, Kohut, Kernberg, Khan, Blos, Blum, Modell, Volkan, Adler, Kramer, Bach, Meissner, Burland, Singer, and Chasseguet-Smirgel. Among the descriptive psychiatrists included are: . the founding fathers of descriptive psychiatry such as Kraepelin, Magnan, Kretschmer, Bleuler, Schneider, and Jaspers; later investigators such as Maudsley, Cleckley, Langfeldt, Leonhard, Sheldon, Hoch, and Polatin; and contemporary observers such as Fish, Winokur, Spitzer, Gunderson, Frances, Kendler, Stone, Reid, Livesley, Akiskal, Perry, and Klerman. Combining the observations of these prominent analysts and empirical researchers leads to the sound clinical profiles of eight severe personality disorders - narcissistic, borderline, schizoid, paranoid, hypomanic, antisocial, histrionic, and schizotypal - contained in this book. Akhtar provides a rich harvest of evaluative procedures and therapeutic techniques. In the initial evaluation he combines traditional history taking with a penetrating examination of the patient's sense of identity, ego defenses, object relations, and psychological-mindedness. This enables the clinician to choose the most effective therapeutic strategies. Psychoanalytic psychotherapy is discussed indetail, including the synthesis of diverse approaches as well as the addition of environmental and supportive measures. This is an important exploration of the mutual interdependence of psychiatry and psychoanalysis and makes a major contribution to the understanding and psychotherapy of the personality disorders.