It’s not always easy to make sense of your inner world, especially if your feelings, thoughts, or relationships often feel overwhelming, confusing, or contradictory. Maybe you find yourself caught up in intense emotions, cycling through idealization and disappointment in relationships, or struggling to hold onto a stable sense of who you are. If any of this resonates, Transference Focused Psychotherapy (TFP) may be a helpful form of treatment for you.

What Is Transference-Focused Psychotherapy?

Transference-Focused Psychotherapy (TFP) is an evidence-based treatment designed to help people with complex inner lives, especially those who struggle with identity, emotion regulation, and relationship dynamics. It’s particularly effective for people with borderline personality disorder (BPD), but it can be helpful for other personality disorders and anyone who experiences emotional instability or chronic patterns that get in the way of life and connection.

TFP was developed by Drs. Otto Kernberg and Frank Yeomans, and is rooted in modern psychoanalytic thinking. However, it’s highly structured, active, and focused on present-day emotional and relational experiences. It’s designed to work at a deep level to help you understand the way your mind is organized and how you experience yourself and others, and then help you transform the emotional and relational patterns that feel stuck.

This approach is based on the idea that our early relationships shape how we see ourselves and others, and those patterns live on in our adult lives, often outside of conscious awareness. In TFP, your therapist helps you explore how those internal patterns show up in the therapy relationship itself.

How Does TFP Work?

TFP is typically a twice-weekly therapy and has a clearly defined structure. At the beginning of treatment, you and your therapist create a shared understanding of what you’re working toward, including a focus on safety, consistency, and reducing impulsive or harmful behaviors.

However, Transference-Focused Psychotherapy is not just about behavior change or reducing symptoms; it’s about identity integration. Many people who benefit from TFP experience themselves in fragmented or contradictory ways: competent and capable one moment, worthless and unlovable the next. These internal divisions can lead to emotional turmoil and confusion about who you really are.

In therapy, the goal is to integrate those split-off parts to help you develop a more coherent, stable, and compassionate sense of identity. As you begin to see yourself and others in more nuanced ways, you’re more able to regulate your emotions, build meaningful relationships, and respond to life with greater clarity.

This isn’t passive or detached therapy. It’s dynamic, collaborative, and emotionally engaged. It can sometimes feel intense, but that’s where the real work happens. Your therapist will help you safely explore parts of yourself that feel fragmented, in conflict, or hard to tolerate, and over time, integrate them into a more cohesive, stable sense of self.

What Makes TFP Unique?

• Focused on the present, using the therapist-client relationship to reveal core beliefs and patterns
  
• Structured, with clear goals and a treatment contract to support safety and collaboration
  
• Transformative, aiming not just to manage symptoms but to change how you experience yourself and others
  
• Deeply relational, with the therapist acting as a partner in exploring, naming, and integrating unconscious dynamics

Who Might Benefit from Transference-Focused Psychotherapy?

TFP may be a good fit if you:

• Struggle with intense or rapidly shifting emotions
• Feel confused or unstable in your sense of identity
• Experience patterns of idealizing and devaluing others
• Have difficulty maintaining satisfying relationships
• Tend to view people (including yourself) in extremes: all good or all bad
• Often feel empty, reactive, or unsure of who you are
• Engage in self-sabotaging or self-harming behaviors

While TFP was initially developed to treat BPD, it’s also used to support individuals with other personality disorders, complex trauma, and persistent relational issues.

Healing Through Integration

Individuals with BPD or similar struggles often experience identity diffusion and a fragmented inner world. This can feel like a war between different parts of yourself: loving vs. angry, confident vs. ashamed, hopeful vs. despairing.

TFP helps integrate these fragmented parts. Rather than splitting your world into extremes, this approach works to help you hold complexity, tolerate nuance, and feel more whole.

Over time, TFP can help you begin to:

• Feel more emotionally grounded and stable
• Identify and understand internal conflicts that cause suffering
• Develop a more nuanced view of yourself and others
• Decrease self-destructive behaviors and reactive patterns
• Improve functioning in work, relationships, and daily life

TFP at Tate Psychotherapy

Here at Tate Psychotherapy, we believe that deep, lasting healing is possible when you feel safe enough to explore your inner world with care and curiosity.

That’s why we’re excited to share that our founder, Mary Tate, LCSW, is currently completing advanced training in Transference-Focused Psychotherapy through the Columbia University Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research, one of the most rigorous and respected TFP programs in the country.

Mary brings this depth of training and a grounded, compassionate approach to her work with clients who are ready to go beyond symptom relief and toward a more integrated, empowered version of themselves.

Is Transference-Focused Psychotherapy Right for You?

You don’t have to navigate your internal world alone. If you’re tired of repeating painful patterns, confused about who you are, or want more stability in how you relate to yourself and others, Transference-Focused Psychotherapy could be a powerful next step.

Schedule a free consultation to explore whether TFP is a good fit for you.

Sources

Kernberg, O.F., et al. “Transference-Focused Psychotherapy: Overview and Update. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, June 2008. Accessed June 10, 2025.