Personality disorders, from borderline disorder to narcissism, constitute a large proportion of the severe psychopathology that services and psychotherapists are increasingly required to address. The need for accurate diagnosis and effective treatment has therefore become ever more pressing.
Borderline Psychopathological Organization, Object Relations Theory and Pathological Narcissism: Working with Otto Kernberg on TFP
Organizzazione borderline di personalità, teoria delle relazioni oggettuali e narcisismo patologico: lavorare con Otto Kernberg con la Terapia Focalizzata sul Transfert
Otto Kernberg, an American psychiatrist and psychoanalyst of Austrian origin who emigrated to Chile during the years of Nazi persecution, after directing the research projects of the Menninger Foundation for many years, taught at Cornell University Medical College and at Weill Cornell Presbyterian Hospital in New York. He is Director of the Personality Studies Institute in New York and a training analyst and supervisor at Columbia University’s Center for Psychoanalysis Training and Research. He served as President of the International Psychoanalytic Association from 1997 to 2001 and has distinguished himself for innovative and critical theories vis-à-vis the establishment (see his essay “Thirty Methods to Destroy the Creativity of Psychoanalytic Candidates”), consistently advocating the promotion of research in the psychoanalytic field.
He is among the pioneers in the study and treatment of narcissistic and borderline personality disorders and devised one of the few manualised treatment models for these conditions: TFP (Transference-Focused Psychotherapy), based on a revised object-relations model.
One of the most eminent clinicians and psychoanalysts alive today, his commitment to teaching and training young therapists, his revision of psychoanalytic theories between drive and object relations, and his generous and incisive dissemination of the psychoanalytic legacy, applied also to social dynamics, groups, sexuality, intimate relationships, and social and political leadership, make Otto Kernberg a tireless master and an exemplar of ethics and professionalism, with influence extending beyond the psychoanalytic field.
He is the author of a vast number of articles and many books translated into Italian, including: The Handbook of Transference-Focused Psychotherapy (with Clarkin and Yeomans; Italian ed. Psicoterapia delle personalità borderline, Cortina); Severe Personality Disorders (Bollati Boringhieri); Aggression, Personality Disorders and Perversions (Cortina); Narcissism, Aggression and Self-Destructiveness (Cortina); Love Relations (Cortina); Eroticism and Aggression (Cortina), among many others.
In this four-hour seminar, with his customary generosity, Kernberg will outline his concept of object relations, what he means by borderline organization, pathological narcissism, and the essential principles of his treatment method for personality disorders (TFP, Transference-Focused Psychotherapy).
The seminar is introduced by Clara Mucci, who will provide an in-depth overview of his theories and method within the international landscape.
Clara Mucci, Full Professor of Dynamic Psychology at the University of Bergamo. After completing a PhD in the United States in psychoanalysis, English literature (Shakespeare) and anthropology at Emory University (Atlanta), and after becoming a full professor of English literature, she obtained a degree in clinical psychology, specialising at the SIPP (Italian Society for Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy), and further trained abroad as a Fellow at the Personality Studies Institute in New York directed by Otto Kernberg and at the Weill Cornell Presbyterian Hospital in White Plains, New York.
She subsequently completed first-level training in MBT (Mentalization-Based Treatment) for personality disorders at University College London under the direction of Peter Fonagy and Anthony Bateman. She also obtained certification to conduct the Adult Attachment Interview (under the guidance of Deborah Jakobvitz and Nino Dazzi, instructors at the school directed by Mary Main and Erik Hesse at the University of California, Berkeley), and certification in Reflective Functioning assessment under Howard Steele (The New School, New York), where she was also a visiting scholar in 2018.
Author of numerous monographs on psychoanalytic theory, women’s writing and Shakespeare (e.g., A memoria di donna, Carocci; Il teatro delle streghe, Liguori; Tempeste, Liguori, among others), she is also internationally known for her volumes on trauma (Beyond Individual and Collective Trauma, Karnac, now Routledge; Italian ed. Trauma e perdono, Cortina) and Borderline Bodies (Italian ed. Corpi borderline, Cortina, 2020).
In her clinical approach, grounded in trauma, attachment and neuroscience (drawing especially on Allan Schore’s work) and focused on the treatment of personality disorders, she not only revisits Sándor Ferenczi’s writings, but also presents an integrated method for understanding, treating and caring for patients who have survived severe traumatization, from attachment trauma to massive social traumatizations such as the Shoah, based on psychoanalytic, neuroscientific, and interpersonal and intergenerational neurobiological theory and research.
In this seminar, Clara Mucci will introduce Otto Kernberg’s psychoanalytic clinical theories in the international context, his development of the manualised TFP method, psychoanalytic psychotherapy specifically created by Kernberg for borderline patients, drawing also on her personal experience at the Personality Studies Institute in New York and her clinical practice.
