Interpersonal Boundaries

Salman Akhtar is professor of psychiatry at Jefferson Medical College, lecturer on psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, and training and supervising analyst at the Philadelphia Psychoanalytic Institute. He has published widely in the field of psychoanalysis and psychiatry and is author of Broken Structures: Severe Personality Disorders and Their Treatment (1992) and Quest for Answers: A Primer for Understanding and Treating Severe Personality Disorders (1995), Inner Torment (1999), Immigration and Identity (1999), New Clinical Realms (2004), and Objects of Our Desire (2005) as well as six volumes of poetry.

This book is highly recommended not only for professionals but for those in clinical training, the latter of whom can be expected to gain insight into the complex and often unsuspected dynamics between therapist and patient and, in the process, learn how to best prevent their own transgression of the therapeutic relationship. Readers not well disposed to a psychoanalytic perspective should not be put off, for the contributors are well versed in contemporary neuroscience, draw on empirical studies, and acknowledge the role of culture in effecting interpersonal boundaries. Moreover, the dynamics of transference and countertransference are important to understand no matter what one's theoretical orientation may be. Indeed, this book suggests that it is possible to dampen the fires that threaten to consume both therapist and patient while yet stoking the flames that warm a chilled and fearful heart.

• Chapter 1 The Self and Its Boundaries: An Introductory OverviewChapter 2 Boundary Formation in Children: Normality and PathologyChapter 3 Clinical Perspectives on the Development of BoundariesChapter 4 Sexual and Non-Sexual Boundary Violations in Psychoanalysis and PsychotherapyChapter 5 Going Over the Edge - A One-Person or Two-Person Psychology?Chapter 6 Breaking of Boundaries and Craving for OnenessChapter 7 Experiencing Oneness: Pathological Pursuit or Normal Necessity?Chapter 8 Why Boundaries, Fences, and Walls Around the Self?: A Concluding Commetary