Transference-Focused Psychotherapy in Australian psychiatric training and practice

This article discusses Transference-Focused Psychotherapy, a contemporary evidence-based and manualised form of psychoanalytic psychotherapy for borderline personality disorder. Transference focused psychotherapy has evolved from decades of research in the object-relations approach developed by Professor Otto Kernberg and his collaborators. It is being adopted increasingly throughout North and South America and Europe, and this article explores the role its adoption might play in psychiatric training as well as public and private service provision contexts in Australia.

Transference focused psychotherapy is readily applicable in a range of training, research and public and private service provision contexts in Australia. A numbers of aspects of current Australian psychiatric training and practice, such as the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists advanced training certificate, and the Australian medicare schedule, make it especially relevant for this purpose.