 Hello and welcome to MIPTV and today we've got a really interesting book. Bob reviews books on a regular basis. Bob Cook here. Hi, Bob. Look at that again. Book 25 here. Book 25 here. And this is a bit of a mouthful. I'm going to give it a good shot. Borderline Narcissistic Skitside Adaptations. And it's by Eleanor Greenberg. So let's just kind of... For those people who may not kind of understand what that means. Borderline Personality Disorder. What is it, Bob? What does it... It's got a bad press to start off with. Yeah, yeah, for sure. We're talking about personality disorders here. We're talking about how to work with disturbed people. And if we look at the word borderline, it goes back way into the psychiatric literature. And I'm not sure when it was first coined this term, but I think we're going back into the 1950s and 60s, probably even before. And in fact, then, the terminology simply meant a person who was on the edge of psychosis. So if you look at neurotic on one side, which is the worried well, if you like, and on the other side of continuum of health, this psychosis, which is such with reality on the other, the middle ground is where people veer from the neurotic side to the psychotic side and may have psychotic break-ups or fluid psychosis or partial psychosis and then be able to actually be more operative in the neurotic side. So it's somebody in TA terms who would have a fragile sense of adult. Yes, yes. So their self-concept would be quite fragile and sometimes it wouldn't be enough of the adult to be able to hold them into reality, into equal and present time with others. Would that be right? Correct. And these people have a bad press and if there is an archetype, they'll be there for many years because their level of functioning is impaired if you want to put that language to it. And in relationships particularly, in relationships particularly, their emotional regulation and their ability to hold consistency and continuity over time and their ability for emotional regulation is fragile. Yes. Yes, and it's really interesting, before we actually press the record button, Bob and myself were talking about an idea in humanistic therapy, Margaret Walner, one of them, any kind of tribes of the person-sensitive nation, and I quote from the book, the tribes of the person-sensitive nation, and fragile process. In other words, a fragile sense of self. Very good way to look at it. Yeah, yeah. I've not read that book, but after talking about it off camera, I think I might well go and buy it because it's a wonderful, I really like that sort of term, fragile, you know, processes because I think for a borderline person, that sums that up. And you know, how we've gone over time, especially in the psychiatric world, and looking at this, how can I explain this? Often people who are who mental processes and these sorts of fragility level are misdiagnosed or psychiatrists or mental health professionals don't know what to do with these types of people. And they're called borderline. So you get a whole misdiagnosed or multi-diagnostic categories, which people call borderline when they don't actually know what to do with these types of people. And it's interesting here in the UK, the reality is that someone who has, and I'm aware that we may be having people who watch, who may have been diagnosed with BDP, and I want to be as respectful, absolutely. But one of the things I've known through the years is unless you've got literally full-blown psychosis, the mental health services sometimes just say, well, they've got a personality disorder and the treatment ends then or it's just a case of maybe you need some therapy. But it does need a specific approach. It does need a really deep understanding of the kind of psychological construct of the people who have this. And I'm guessing that this book gives an overview of both. Yeah, Elinor Greenberg is 76, 77 now, I think, might be wrong, I don't know what this is, but I think she's in her 70s, is a very well-known Gestalt psychotherapist. I think she was Vice President of the Gestalt Institute in New York. And she's written a lot about how to work with disturbed people. And this is her latest book that came out last year in fact. So it's a brand new book. Now she doesn't actually talk much about the schizoid adaptations even though she's got that in the title. Probably fair to say that the majority of this book is about how you work with people from a borderline position in a distant, you know, fragile sense of self is a good way of looking at this. And she has very specific we could call them treatment plans if you like, or models or tips or in this book of how to work in this world with these people. Yeah. And I think it's one of the interesting things is there's forever a debate certainly in the world of counselling. What's the difference between counselling and psychotherapy? A mild joke used to be 40 pounds an hour. But through knowing you, Bob and the Institute and meeting colleagues who've been trained there, one of the things that really is a difference that I've come to accept through the years is that psychotherapy training is of a longer duration. And part of the length of that duration is about formulating specific treatment plans for folks who struggle with your borderline personality disorder or personality disorders. And this book seems to link into it. Very much so. And what I like also about Eleanor Greenberg is the accessibility of our language is not written in any pathological way or any way which is linked in all this psychiatric long terminology. This is very much for psychopurpose. And I really do like some of the mnemonic you know what mnemonic means? Is it the right word where you have a letter which symbolises a particular word? Oh yes. Is that the right word? Yes. I'm not quite sure. She's got one for borderline which is called misery. M stands for mirroring. I stands for identity. S stands for splitting. E stands for engulfment. R stands for I don't remember off the top of the head. Oh regression. Y stands for yearning. She talks about how these particular features are present with the borderline character and where in terms of their histories the process begins or at least we hypothesise about what brings about the world of the narcissistic or personality person and she writes in a very respectful way. Yes. I think it's really interesting that when working with clients who present this it brings up a couple of things for me. One is the level of competence the therapist feels they have to work with a client. I made a referral today just for that reason because I thought they need a different approach and I think that's an ethically sound view of things. But also making sure that the person who comes to see the therapist gets the very best service. Correct. Yeah. Monomic. I think that's the word for these I was thinking acronym Bob What do I know? There's a very good point because people with these fragile processes will be in therapy for a long time. This isn't short-term work so it's for therapists who have a certain level of specialism a certain level of training because you have to work in a specific way with people who have these levels of relating and these levels of early emotional confusion Yes. Which is a much better way of looking at these types of clients because they are coming with very early emotional trauma and confusion. So anybody who presents with a post-9 disorder this level will have high levels of trauma high levels of abuse and high levels of early emotional confusion which means that today they're operating from a very fragile place. Yes. One that's informed by their history and their childhood. Well, I think I actually buy because it's tittle my interest, Bob. It's recently new. It's 2016 I believe. That's very recent. And as usual we'll put a link in the comments below. Let's have some comments. As always, this isn't a paid placement Bob does this just for the love of just the two of us chatting away about therapy and literature in general. It's always a joy. I'll put a link to the book. So if you want to inspect it, you can. And as always, Bob, thank you so much. Thank you very much.