HELPLESSNESS AND THE ANALYST'S WAR AGAINST FEELING IT.

In our view helplessness is a primal, often intolerable feeling. It underlies and intensifies other feelings that are also hard to bear. Both analyst and patients face helplessness, and both resort to defenses, often intensely, in order to avoid it.

Core issues in the treatment of personality-disordered patients.

I have offered my understanding of the primary psychological problem for personality-disordered patients. They lack some or all of the selfmaintenance capacities that are required for basic self-stability and survival. That is, they cannot sufficiently provide themselves the experience of being real, warmly secure, worthy, and self-loving, and of having a genuine identity.