Transference-focused psychotherapy in borderline personality disorder

Working through an issue in therapy consists of repeatedly analyzing the dyads that appear first in the transference and then as they appear in the patient's life outside the therapy and in the patient's past. In the course of this, transference interpretations are consistently linked with both of these realms regarding the patient's relationships, behavior control, work functioning, and sense of self. In TFP, change comes from interpretations that increase the patient's awareness of aspects of him or herself that are split rather than integrated. Change also comes from the patient's eventual ability to experience the relationship with the therapist as different from his or her prior repertoire of relations and to generalize this to other relationships outside the therapeutic setting.