Transference-Focused Psychotherapy

Transference-focused psychotherapy (TFP) is a highly structured, twice-weekly modified psychodynamic treatment based on Otto F. Kernberg's object relations model of borderline personality disorder (BPD). It views a person with borderline personality organization as holding unreconciled and contradictory internalized representations of self and significant others that are affectively charged, whose defense leads to disturbed relationships with others and with oneself; treatment focuses on these distorted perceptions as they emerge in the relationship with the therapist, aiming at integration of split-off parts of self and object representations through consistent interpretation. TFP has been validated as an efficacious treatment for BPD, though too few studies exist to allow firm conclusions about its overall value; in one study comparing TFP, dialectical behavior therapy and modified psychodynamic supportive psychotherapy, only TFP was shown to change how patients think about themselves in relationships.