Отто Кернберг: Жизнь и вклад в психоанализ

Austrian psychoanalyst and psychologist

Otto Friedmann Kernberg (born 10 September 1928) is an Austrian born American psychoanalyst and professor of psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medicine. He is most widely known for his psychoanalytic theories on borderline personality organization and narcissistic pathology. In addition, his work has been central in integrating postwar ego psychology (which was primarily developed in the United States and the United Kingdom) with Kleinian and other object relations perspectives (which was developed primarily in the United Kingdom and South America). His integrative writings were central to the development of modern object relations, a school within modern psychoanalysis.

Born in Vienna to Jewish parents, Leo Kernberg, and Sonia Paula Friedmann Kernberg, Kernberg was an only child. Kernberg and his family fled Nazi Germany in 1939, emigrating to Chile. He studied biology and medicine at the University of Chile, and afterwards psychiatry and psychoanalysis with the Chilean Psychoanalytic Society. He first came to the U. S. in 1959 on a Rockefeller Foundation fellowship to study research in psychotherapy with Jerome Frank at the Johns Hopkins Hospital. In 1961 he emigrated to the U. S. joining the C. F. Menninger Memorial Hospital, later became director of the hospital until 1965. He was the Supervising and Training Analyst of the Topeka Institute for Psychoanalysis, and Director of the Psychotherapy Research Project of Menninger Foundation. During this time, the insight of his colleague Herman van der Waals contributed in raising Kernberg's awareness and interest in narcissistic personalities. In 1973 he moved to New York where he was Director of the General Clinical Service of the New York State Psychiatric Institute. In 1974 he was appointed Professor of Clinical Psychiatry at the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Columbia University and Training and Supervising Analyst at the Columbia University Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research. In 1976 he was appointed as Professor of Psychiatry at Cornell University and Director of the Institute for Personality Disorders Institute of the New York Hospital Cornell Medical Center. He was President of the International Psychoanalytical Association from 1997 to 2001. He was married to Paulina Kernberg, a child psychiatrist and also a Cornell professor, until her death in 2006. His principal contributions have been in the fields of narcissism, object relations theory and personality disorders. He developed a novel and useful framework for coordinating personality disorders along dimensions of structural organization and severity. He was awarded the 1972 Heinz Hartmann Award of the New York Psychoanalytic Society and Institute, the 1975 Edward A. Strecker Award from the Institute of Pennsylvania Hospital, the 1981 George E. Daniels Merit Award of the Association for Psychoanalytic Medicine.

Otto Kernberg designed an intensive form of psychoanalytic psychotherapy known as Transference Focused Psychotherapy (TFP), which is intended to be suitable for Borderline Personality Organization (BPO) patients. BPO patients are described as experiencing so called 'splits' in their affect and thinking, and the intended aim of the treatment is focused on the integration of split off parts of self and object representations. TFP entails two to three 45 or 50 minute sessions per week. It views the individual as holding unreconciled and contradictory internalized representations of self and significant others that are affectively charged. The defense against these contradictory internalized object relations is called identity diffusion, and leads to disturbed relationships with others and with self. The distorted perceptions of self, others, and associated affects are the focus of treatment as they emerge in the relationship with the therapist (transference). The consistent interpretation of these distorted perceptions is considered the mechanism of change.

Kernberg designed TFP especially for patients with BPO. In his model, these patients suffer from identity diffusion, primitive defense operations and unstable reality testing. Identity diffusion results from pathological object relations and involves contradictory character traits, discontinuity of self and either very idealized or devalued object relations. Defense operations often applied by BPO patients are splitting, denial, projective identification, primitive devaluation / idealization and omnipotence. Reality testing is negatively influenced by the primitive defense mechanisms as they change a person's perception of self and others.

The major goals of TFP are better behavioral control, increased affect regulation, more intimate and gratifying relationships and the ability to pursue life goals. To do this, the client's affectively charged internal representations of previous relationships are consistently interpreted as the therapist becomes aware of them in the therapeutic relationship, that is, the transference. Techniques of clarification, confrontation, and interpretation are used within the evolving transference relationship between the patient and the therapist.

Otto Kernberg states that there are three types of narcissism: normal adult narcissism, normal infantile narcissism, and pathological narcissism. Pathological narcissism, defined as the libidinal investment in a pathological structure of the self, is further divided into three types (regression to the regulation of the infantile self esteem, narcissistic choice of object, narcissistic personality disorder) with narcissistic personality disorder being the most severe of all. Still, narcissism has been a great source of disagreement between Otto Kernberg and Heinz Kohut. Although both focused on narcissistic, borderline, and psychotic patients, the focus and content of their theory and treatment has been considerably differentiated. Their major diversities emerged in response to their conceptualizations regarding the relationship between Narcissistic and Borderline personalities, normal vs. pathological narcissism, their ideas about narcissistic idealization and the grandiose self, as well as the psychoanalytic technique and the narcissistic transference.

According to Kernberg, the self is an intrapsychic structure consisting of multiple self representations. It is a realistic self which integrates both good and bad self images. That is, the self constitutes a structure that combines libidinally and aggressively invested components. Kernberg defines normal narcissism as the libidinal investment of the self. However, it needs to be emphasized that this libidinal investment of the self is not merely derived from an instinctual source of libidinal energy. On the contrary, it stems from the several relationships between the self and other intrapsychic structures, such as the ego the superego and the id.

This is a normal self esteem based on normal structures of the self. The individual has introjected whole representations of objects, has stable objects relationships and a solid moral system. The superego is fully developed and individualized.

Regulation of self esteem occurs through gratifications related to the age, which include or imply a normal infantile system of values, demands or prohibitions.

Otto Kernberg and Heinz Kohut can be considered to be two theorists that have markedly influenced past and current psychoanalytic thinking. Both focused on the observation and treatment of patients who were otherwise thought to be unsuitable for analytic therapy. Their main work has been mostly related to individuals with narcissistic, borderline, and psychotic psychopathology. Still, their perspectives concerning the causes, psychic organization, and treatment of these disorders have been considerably different. Taken as a whole, Kohut is regarded as a self theorist who radically departed from Sigmund Freud's conjectural conceptualizations, focusing mostly on people's need for self organization and self expression. Kernberg in contrast, remained faithful to the Freudian metapsychology, concentrating more on people's struggle between love and aggression. Their main differences are summarized below.

One of the main disagreements between the two theorists revolves around their conceptualization among narcissistic and borderline disorders. According to Kernberg, the defensive structure of the narcissistic individual is quite similar to that of the borderline person since the former has a fairly underlying borderline personality organization which becomes obvious when one looks at the defenses of splitting and projective identification. He identifies constitutional along with environmental factors as the source of disturbance for these individuals by stressing the important role of the mother surrogate who treats the child on the surface (callously) with little regard for his/her feelings and needs. Kohut on the other hand, sees borderline personality as totally distinct from the narcissistic one and less able to benefit from the analytic treatment. Equally, a narcissistic personality is more apt for analysis since it is characterized by a more resilient self. According to Kohut , the environment alone is the major cause of troubles for these persons. Moreover, although both focus on the concept of the "grandiose self" in their narcissistic personality theorizing, they provide different explanations for it. For Kohut, "grandiose self" reflects the "fixation of an archaic 'normal' primitive self" while for Kernberg it is a pathological development, different from normal narcissism. For Kohut treatment should be primarily centered on encouraging the patient's narcissistic desires, wishes, and needs to open up during the process of transference. For Kernberg, the goal of treatment should be to use confrontation strategies so as to help the patient integrate his/her internal fragmented world.

One of the main arguments between Kohut and Kernberg is about normal and pathological narcissism. As mentioned earlier, Kohut assumes that a narcissistic personality suffers from developmental arrest. Specifically, he assumes that this type of personality mirrors adaptive narcissistic wishes, needs, and objectives that, nevertheless, have not been satisfied during childhood development by the parental environment. Here, the grandiose self is nothing more than an archaic form that prospectively ought to become the normal self. When this does not occur then pathological narcissism emerges. In his explanation of pathological narcissism, he pays attention on the libidinal forces or charges in order to provide an etiology of how this disorder develops. For him the aggression drive is of secondary importance in respect to the libidinal drive and that is why one should differentiate between ordinary aggression and narcissistic rage. The first, according to him, is adaptive for eradicating obstructions when heading toward a realistic goal whereas the second is the forceful response to narcissistic injury. Kernberg however, sees Kohut's ideas as de emphasizing the power of aggression. He allies more to the Freudian conceptualization, by proposing that narcissistic behavior results from pathological development in which aggressive drives play a central role. He argues that narcissism on the whole involves a strong aggressive drive that cannot possibly be analyzed separately from the libidinal one. As he says, "one cannot study the vicissitudes of normal and pathological narcissism without relating the development of the respective internalized object relations to both libidinal and aggressive drive alternatives."

Kohut departed from the classical Freudian view, which suggested that some patients could not be analyzed given that they lacked the ability to develop transferences. He postulated that narcissistic patients are capable of presenting transferences but these are somewhat different from those of other patients, such as the neurotics. He distinguished three types, namely the idealizing, the mirror, or the twinship transference. His debate with Kernberg concerns mostly the idealizing transference, which, according to Kohut, relates to a fixation at an archaic level of normal development. Still Kernberg believed that the idealizing transference is nothing more than a pathological type of idealization that is produced as a response to the substantial instigation of the grandiose self in the transference.

Otto F. Kernberg and Heinz Kohut regard the analytic process as well as the role of the analyst in quite different terms.

Kernberg requests a methodological and persistent interpretation of the defensive function of grandiosity and idealization as they emerge in transference. The role of the analyst should be neutral rather than supportive, especially during the confrontation process, in order to modify the narcissist's pathological structure. "The analyst must be continuously focusing on the particular quality of the transference in these cases and consistently counteract the patient's efforts toward omnipotent control and devaluation". These narcissistic illusions thus give an opportunity for revitalization of the self. In his work with narcissistic patients, the defining feature of Heinz Kohut's psychoanalytic methodology became therefore empathic immersion (or vicarious inspection), whereby he tried to put himself in his patient's shoes. This view is certainly in contrast with Freud's early view of the analyzability of narcissistic defenses as discussed above.

Both Kohut and Kernberg regarded each other's approaches as counterproductive. From Kohut's point of view, the methodical interpretive approach recommended by Kernberg is interpreted by the narcissistically vulnerable patient as an assault and generates intense narcissistic rage. As Kernberg instead recommends this methodology for treating these patients, self psychology regards Kernberg as creating narcissism instead of treating it.

Kernberg saw the infant in the first months of his life as struggling to sort out his experience on the basis of the affective valence of this experience. The infant moves back and forth between two different affective states. One state is characterized as pleasurable and gratified; the other state is unpleasurable, painful and frustrating. Regardless of what one is in, no distinction is made between self and other.

The first developmental task embodies being able to make a distinction between what is self and what is other. When this task would not be accomplished, one cannot develop a dependable sense of the self as separate and distinct because one cannot make a distinction between one's own experience and the experience of others. This failure is hypothesized to be the major precursor for all psychotic states. In schizophrenic symptoms (hallucinations, delusions, psychic fragmentation) we can see a lack of being able to separate between internal and external world, own experience and experience of others, own mind and the mind of another.

The second developmental task is to overcome splitting. When the first developmental task is accomplished, one is able to differentiate between self images and object images; however, these images remain segregated affectively. Loving self images and images of good objects are held together by positive affects, or libidinal affects. Hateful images of the self and bad, frustrating object images are held together by negative or aggressive affects. The good is separated from the bad. The developmental task is accomplished when the child is able to see objects as "whole", meaning that the child can see objects as being both good and bad. Next to seeing "whole" objects, the child is required to see the self as being loving and hating, as being good and bad at the same time. When one fails to accomplish this second developmental task, this will result in a borderline pathology, meaning that objects or the self cannot be seen as both good and bad; something is good, or it is bad, but both affects cannot be in the same object together.

In contrast with Freud's perspective, drives are not inborn according to Kernberg. The libidinal and aggressive drives are shaped, developed over time by experiences of interactions with others. The child's good and bad affects become consolidated and shaped into libidinal and aggressive drives. Good, pleasurable interactions with others consolidate, over time, into a pleasure seeking (libidinal) drive. In the same way bad, unsatisfying and frustrating interactions with others, become consolidated into a destructive (aggressive) drive over time.