Marital psychotherapy, Borderline personality disorder, Narcissism, Psychoanalysis 

The social isolation caused by single-parent families, decreased parental contact with children, and absence of extended families has produced a large number of narcissistic/borderline couples, in which the partners form a parasitic bond and play out a destructive drama of earlier conflicts. This volume presents an approach to treatment of such couples, based on the views of Kohut, Grotstein, Klein, Bion and other theorists. Dr. Lachkar combines clinical constructs from self psychology, object-relations theory, group psychology theory, and couples theory to produce a positive six-point systematic treatment procedure. She examines the key issues of maternal bonding, attachment, containment, empathy, and mirroring needs and discusses numerous case examples demonstrating various types of marital conflict.