Abstract: | SUMMARY Transference-Focused Psychotherapy (TFP) is a modified psychodynamic psychotherapy, based on object relations theory of personality and psychoanalytic principles of the dynamic unconscious, the importance of transference and counter-transference, and the reliance upon interpretation of the transference as the dominant therapeutic intervention. TFP has been shown to be effective in reducing symptoms and improving reflective function in a randomized clinical trial with borderline patients. Beyond initial symptom reduction, TFP has as a goal the integration of identity through interpretative elaboration of split off internalized representations of self and others that underlie the DSM IV-TR descriptive phenomena of borderline personality disorder. |