Treating Borderline States in Marriage: Dealing with Oppositionalism, Ruthless Aggression, and Severe Resistance (The Library of Object Relations)
This book is a gift to all therapists who battle to help seriously disturbed couples. Charles McCormack provides a carefully crafted, original synthesis of theory drawn from object relations and self psychology and illustrates it with luminous clinical examples. At every step he describes the process through which patients' relational disturbances get inside the therapist and how the therapist can learn to contain them. Throughout, McCormack's own struggle to help patients grow, rather than destroy what they hold most dear, is the integrating force. All therapists who brave the storms of these turbulent marriage relationships will be grateful for McCormack's invaluable guidance as they navigate troubled shoals. It offers a lighthouse on the path to therapeutic survival and safe harbor. This book, which will enrich the work of both the most experienced therapist and the hopeful novice, is a must-read! (David Scharff, M.D.)A therapist's faithful companion along a hard road, this book guides us toward finding a much wider scope for using ourselves as therapeutic instruments. It is that rarity, a 'how to' book that is also a 'why to' book, one that makes clear how ultimate the stakes are in therapy. McCormack's writing lives because he has lived what he writes. His anecdotes surge off the page, sometimes so charged with the elemental pain of being a person that it takes your breath away. He asks deep questions about the rules of engagement with couples in trouble and troubles in couples. This is a book to live with, to learn from, and to lean on. (Roger A. Levin, M.D.)This spellbinding volume represents the accumulated wisdom of a gifted therapist who has developed an extraordinarily effective treatment approach to working with couples who have personality disorders, one that seamlessly integrates the interpersonal with the intrapsychic. A highly original and creative thinker, McCormack has synthesized the contributions of object relations theorists like Klein, Fairbairn, Winnicott, and Ogden to inform his understanding of, and approach to, these difficult and complex patients. Respectfully framing their unrelenting provocativeness as a desperate attempt to extract from the object (be it partner or therapist) a means of healing past unresolved traumas, the author encourages the therapist to put forth, for mutual observation and understanding, the countertransferential responses these patients elicit. McCormack's extensive use of clinical vignettes to illustrate his treatment method demonstrates that we are dealing with a master clinician who, with humility and compassion, is able to go where other therapists, less wise and courageous, fear to tread. Inspired and inspiring, this important book should be required reading for any practitioner who works with personality-disordered patients. (Martha Stark, M.D.)