Otto Kernberg
Developed transference-focused therapy for personality disorders.
Creator of transference-focused psychotherapy, a structured psychodynamic treatment that works through the relationship enacted with the therapist.
terms
techniques
Loneliness, one might say, is a prerequisite for transcendence.
Who they were
Born in Vienna, Otto Kernberg fled the Nazis to Chile, trained as a psychiatrist, then emigrated to the United States. He worked at the Menninger Foundation and later Cornell, becoming one of the most influential psychoanalytic theorists of personality disorders by integrating ego psychology with object relations. He developed TFP and served as President of the International Psychoanalytical Association.
Terms they cared about
Ideas worth knowing
Their techniques
How the work was done
Their big idea
Object-Relations Theory (TFP)
Split images of self and other are integrated through the live transference with the therapist.
The approach they founded
Transference-Focused Psychotherapy
Uses the live therapy relationship to surface and integrate split-apart images of self and other.
Questions in their spirit
What they’d ask you
Sit with one. Answer online, or in the app.
Carry the idea forward
Kernberg — What they’d ask you
Psipas asks you one small, honest question at a time — and builds the picture from your answers.