Interpersonal Boundaries

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.

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.

Chapter 1 The Self and Its Boundaries: An Introductory Overview Chapter 2 Boundary Formation in Children: Normality and Pathology Chapter 3 Clinical Perspectives on the Development of Boundaries Chapter 4 Sexual and Non-Sexual Boundary Violations in Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy Chapter 5 Going Over the Edge - A One-Person or Two-Person Psychology? Chapter 6 Breaking of Boundaries and Craving for Oneness Chapter 7 Experiencing Oneness: Pathological Pursuit or Normal Necessity? Chapter 8 Why Boundaries, Fences, and Walls Around the Self?: A Concluding Commetary