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Borderline Personality Disorder: A Therapist's Guide to Taking Control

Author(s) : Arthur Freeman, Author(s) : Gina M. Fusco

Reviews and Endorsements

Borderline personality disorder (BPD) frequently creates turmoil, dysfunction, and impairment in the lives of diagnosed people, as well as among their families, friends, and colleagues. The disorder and lack of control that characterize BPD are, however, organized around consistent habits. The Taking Control Program presented by Fusco and Freeman targets these patterns, helping people understand, address, and, eventually, alter them for the better. Borderline Personality Disorder: A Patient's Guide to Taking Control is your means to begin to take command of your life by following the therapeutic course described in these pages.Chapter by chapter, you will explore the nine basic patterns that typify BPD. Once you understand each of these patters, you will then assess the degree to which you exhibit any number of those patterns and learn various strategies that you can adopt to address those habits. The Patient's Guide provides a step-by-step cognitive program rich in worksheets and exercises to facilitate your personal process of self-examination and problem solving. Fusco and Freeman offer those diagnosed with BPD, as well as their therapists, invaluable guidance in negotiating the pitfalls of BPD as you move ahead toward the prospect of retaking control over your life.

These volumes present practical strategies and the research theory behind them. The therapist's manual should provide a clinician with the necessary tools for working with this innovative programme from the basic steps of an assessment through all treatment phases. The accompanying patient's manual offers the individual with BPD concrete, specific and useful material and techniques with which to work.This treatment programme involves four stages. The first is identifying the specific areas where control needs to be asserted. The second step is taking control. This involves changing how one thinks, feels and acts. The programme should help clinicians choose specific techniques that are designed for helping the participant assert control. The third step is maintaining control. Through readings and therapy, patients should be helped to maintain gains made through the programme. The fourth and final stage is relapse prevention.

BPD presents with so many clinical permutations that clinicians are often at a loss when trying to address the unique and varied needs of their clients. Neither clinician nor client is in a position to establish the control the client so desperately needs. In Borderline Personality Disorder: A Therapist's Guide to Taking Control, Freeman and Fusco offer the means by which clinicians can get a hold of BPD in the therapeutic situation and, most importantly, in their clients' lives. Organized in chapters that correspond to each of the nine criteria for BPD the Therapist's Guide is designed to aid the experienced therapist in performing the focused, structured work necessary with patients. This book lays out a constructive program for organizing effective therapy by moving through each criterion, examining it and whether it is manifested in clients' life, and, then, providing critical, reflective, and calming strategies by which clients can begin to take control of their lives. The Therapist's Guide provides the basic structure of the detailed therapeutic exercises that the Patient's Guide establishes for the client's use both in therapy and at home in between sessions.

About the Authors

GINA M. FUSCO, PSY.D. is a licensed psychologist in Philadelphia. She is a System of Care Clinical Director for Alternative Behavioral Services, a comprehensive behavioral healthcare program for high-risk adolescents. She has led clinical diagnostic teams for juvenile detention centers, and has created several crisis intervention programs for psychiatric hospitals. She has authored and coauthored chapters on the treatment of crisis-prone patients, crisis intervention, and personality disorders. She lectures at The Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine, and Chestnut Hill College in Philadelphia.

ARTHUR FREEMAN, ED.D., is Professor and Chair of the Department of Psychology at the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine, and on the core faculty of the Adler School of Professional Psychology. In addition to 50 book chapters, reviews and journal articles, he has published thirty professional books and two popular books, Woulda, Coulda, Shoulda: Overcoming Mistakes and Missed Opportunities and The Ten Dumbest Mistakes Smart People Make, and How to Overcome Them.