The slippery slope: touch in dynamic psychiatry.
This article is a telescoped narrative of a seven year psychodynamic therapy with a chronically depressed, chronically suicidal, often paranoid woman who presented with a classic Borderline Personality Disorder. An unexpected and powerful moment of physical contact in an otherwise austere therapeutic relationship marked a turning point in a treatment that was blocked. After the patient and clinician integrated this experience, there was a subtle but significant change in the transference reflecting a change in her core paranoid structure.
Brockman
Richard
R
Department of Psychiatry, Columbia University, College of Physicians and Surgeons. rb37@columbia.edu
D000328:Adult; D001883:Borderline Personality Disorder / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000523:psychology / Q000628:therapy*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D011570:Psychiatry / Q000379:methods*; D011575:Psychoanalytic Therapy; D014167:Transference, Psychology