Interpersonal Boundaries: Variations and Violations

Across the lifespan we may experience moments of sublime intimacy, suffocating closeness, comfortable solitude, and intolerable distance or closeness. In Interpersonal Boundaries: Variations and Violations Salman Akhtar and the other contributors demonstrate how boundaries, by delineating and containing the self, secure one’s conscious and unconscious experience of entity and of self-governance. Interpersonal Boundaries reveals the complexities of the self and its boundaries, while identifying some of the enigmatic questions about how the biological, psychological, and cultural aspects of the self interrelate. The contributors skillfully integrate a wide range of theory with a wealth of clinical material. Examples range from the dark side of boundary-violating therapists to an extraordinary presentation of harrowing analytic work with a severely traumatized man. Readers will find that this volume makes a significant contribution to the knowledge of boundaries of the self in psychotherapeutic theory and practice.

Salman Akhtar is professor of psychiatry at Jefferson Medical College, lecturer on psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, and training and supervising analyst at the Philadelphia Psychoanalytic Institute. He has published widely in the field of psychoanalysis and psychiatry and is author of Broken Structures: Severe Personality Disorders and Their Treatment (1992) and Quest for Answers: A Primer for Understanding and Treating Severe Personality Disorders (1995), Inner Torment (1999), Immigration and Identity (1999), New Clinical Realms (2004), and Objects of Our Desire (2005) as well as six volumes of poetry.