Treating Borderline States in Marriage: Dealing with Oppositionalism, Ruthless Aggression, and Severe Resistance

"This spellbinding volume represents the accumulated wisdom of a gifted therapist who has developed an extraordinarily effective treatment approach to working with couples who have personality disorders, one that seamlessly integrates the interpersonal with the intrapsychic. A highly original and creative thinker, McCormack has synthesized the contributions of object relations theorists like Klein, Fairbairn, Winnicott, and Ogden to inform his understanding of, and approach to, these difficult and complex patients. Respectfully framing their unrelenting provocativeness as a desperate attempt to extract from the object (be it partner or therapist) a means of healing past unresolved traumas, the author encourages the therapist to put forth, for mutual observation and understanding, the countertransferential responses these patients elicit. McCormack's extensive use of clinical vignettes to illustrate his treatment method demonstrates that we are dealing with a master clinician who, with humility and compassion, is able to go where other therapists, less wise and courageous, fear to tread."
Martha Stark, M.D. Author, Working with Resistance and Modes of Therapeutic Action

"This book is a gift to all therapists who battle to help seriously disturbed couples. Charles McCormack provides a carefully crafted, original synthesis of theory drawn from object relations and self psychology and illustrates it with luminous clinical examples. At every step he describes the process through which patients' relational disturbances get inside the therapist and how the therapist can learn to contain them. Through, McCormack's own struggle to help patents grow, rather than destroy what they hold most dear, is the integrating force.
"All therapists who brave tthe storms of these turbulent marriage relationships will be grateful for McCormack's invaluable guidance as they navigate trouble shoals. If offers a lighthouse on the path to therapeutic survival and safe harbor."
David Scharff, M.D. Co-Director, International Institute of Object Relations Therapy

"A therapist's faithful companion along a hard road, this book guides us toward finding a much wider scope for using ourselves as therapeutic instruments. It is that rarity, a 'how to' book that is also a 'why to' book. , one that makes it clear how ultimate the stakes are in therapy. McCormack's writiiing lives because he has lived what he writes. His anecdotes surge off the page, sometimes so charged with the elemental pain of being a person that it takes your breath away. He asks deep questions about the rules of engagement with couples in trouble and troubles in couples. This is a book to live with, to learn from, and to lean on."
Roger A. Lewin, M.D. Author, Creative Collaboration in Psychotherapy

This book starts with addressing the therapist. First addressing, in section I, the Therapist's Resistance to Understanding and then bringing to life the Trauma of Treating a Borderline Couple. In section II , , McCormack shifts to elaborating the Borderline Level of Organization, the use of primitive defenses and survival needs, and then explores in detail the Borderline Level of Organization as developmental deficit entailing the use of primitive defenses and reactive relationship to both their own thoughts and feelings with little capacity for self modulation, self-observation or reflection resulting in acting out reigning over thinking through and a relative inability to learn from experience. In section III Mr. McCormack addresses the `whys' of treatment repeatedly followed by the 'hows' , detailing in vignette after vignette the therapeutic process. In this endeavor, he draws not only on his treatment successes, but also his treatment failures thereby making his writing more available to therapist, family and patient alike for learning.