Boundaries and Boundary Violations in Psychoanalysis
A classic clinical study of the analytic frame and how boundaries are crossed.
Glen Gabbard offers a comprehensive overview of past wisdom and current insights into the persistent problem of boundaries and boundary violations.
Boundaries and Boundary Violations in Psychoanalysis sets out the structure of the analytic relationship and the conditions under which its limits give way. Gabbard and Lester treat the frame as a working container rather than a fixed rulebook, and they distinguish crossings, brief and often reparable departures from usual practice, from violations that exploit the patient and corrupt the treatment. Drawing on clinical material, disciplinary cases, and the countertransference pressures analysts face, they trace how small deviations accumulate and how a practitioner slides from one to the other without registering the shift.
Later chapters extend the argument to sexual and nonsexual transgressions, post-termination contact, supervision, and conduct in digital settings, and they weigh the institution's part in both prevention and response. For the clinician the work supplies a vocabulary for reading warning signs in the consulting room and a framework for thinking about accountability when limits fail.
About the authors
Glen Owens Gabbard
Glen O. Gabbard is an American psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, born in 1949. He is Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas, and a training and supervising analyst at the Center for Psychoanalytic Studies. His work centres on psychodynamic psychiatry, professional boundary violations, and the psychotherapies. He has authored or edited many books and papers, including texts on psychotherapy, psychoanalysis, physician health, and depictions of mental illness in film.
Eva Papamatheaki Lester
Eva P. Lester (1922 to 2008), born Evangelie Papamatheaki, was a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who worked in Montreal. She was a professor of psychiatry at McGill University and a training and supervising analyst with the Canadian Institute of Psychoanalysis. She served as president of the Canadian Psychoanalytic Society and founding editor of the Canadian Journal of Psychoanalysis. She was known for co-authoring Boundaries and Boundary Violations in Psychoanalysis (1995) with Glen O. Gabbard, a study of boundary issues in psychoanalytic practice.
Details
- 1995
- American Psychiatric Association Publishing
- American Psychiatric Association Publishing, 2nd ed. (2016)
- 195
- 9781615370177