TRANSFERENCE‐FOCUSED PSYCHOTHERAPY AND MENTALIZATION‐BASED TREATMENT: BROTHER AND SISTER?

Transference‐focused psychotherapy and mentalization‐based treatment are new psychoanalytic treatment forms for borderline patients. How do these forms of treatment differ and how are they alike? What interventions do they yield in clinical practice? In the past few years two methods of psychoanalytic treatment for borderline patients have been developed: transference‐focused therapy and mentalization‐based treatment. This paper explores the similarities and differences between them, with a special focus on how the different theories lead to different interventions in clinical practice. TFP takes the central problem to be the disorder in object relations, while MBT focuses on the self as agent. Further differences concern notions of the role of aggression, the presence of mental representations and the position of the therapist. Interventions formulated by therapists of both frames of reference in response to some therapy fragments differed substantially. Both theories share a desire to develop a psychoanalytical technique suitable for borderline patients, and both stress the central importance of the handling of the transference and of working in the here‐and‐now, as well as the necessity for effect research.