ABSTRACT
The findings about borderline patients and the narcissistic disturbances serve as a negative list for the hindrance of love. Since the level of love a person can achieve is also of great importance for the analytic relationship, Otto F. Kernberg gives a lot of hints about success and failure of analytic treatments. Mature love is bound to the "normal capacity for idealization, achieved toward the end of adolescence or in young adulthood". The chapter focuses on Kernberg's clinical vignettes covering adolescent and middle age love relationships. He considers the differentiation of normal identity crisis from borderline typical identity diffusion. The body sensations are related to the genitals of the lovers and the mutual capacity to supply the other with orgasm. Kernberg states that "the differential diagnosis between identity crisis and identity diffusion requires a careful examination of an adolescent's behaviour and subjective experience".
