A manual-based psychodynamic therapy for treatment-resistant borderline personality disorder.

The authors introduce a manual-based treatment, labeled dynamic deconstructive psychotherapy, developed for those patients with borderline personality disorder who are most difficult to engage in therapy, such as those having co-occurring substance use disorders. This treatment model is based on the hypothesis that borderline pathology and related behaviors reflect impairment in specific neurocognitive functions, including association, attribution, and alterity that form the basis for a coherent and differentiated self. Dynamic deconstructive psychotherapy aims to activate and remediate neurocognitive self-capacities by facilitating elaboration of affect-laden interpersonal experiences and integration of attributions, as well as providing novel experiences in the patient-therapist relationship that promote self-other differentiation. Treatment involves weekly individual sessions for a predetermined period of time and follows sequential stages. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)