Transference-Focused Psychotherapy (TFP) for patients with a personality disorder: introductory talk and information on training

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Transference-Focused Psychotherapy (TFP) is an adapted form of psychodynamic psychotherapy developed by Otto Kernberg and colleagues for working with patients with a personality disorder. It is grounded in object relations theory and places the transference relationship at the centre of treatment.  Alongside this, TFP places explicit emphasis on the patient’s functioning in their life outside the consulting room. Treatment aims are agreed that relate to functioning more effectively at work, in intimate relationships, friendships, and broader social life. This dual focus allows transference work to remain closely linked to the patient’s difficulties in life. 

TFP uses classical psychoanalytic and psychodynamic techniques while placing particular emphasis on structure. This includes a carefully considered assessment process, an explicit therapeutic frame, and a negotiated treatment contract. The contract sets out the aims of treatment and the responsibilities of both patient and therapist, and commonly includes expectations such as reliable attendance, engagement in the work, and agreements to address behaviours that threaten the treatment or the patient’s safety. This may include commitments to refrain from destructive behaviours (for example, substance misuse or self-harm), and clear expectations that the patient will not act on suicidal impulses but will take active steps to protect themselves and seek help if in danger of acting on these. These agreements protect the therapeutic work, and breaches of the contract, when they occur, are considered in terms of psychodynamics.  

This two-hour online workshop offers a clinical orientation to the TFP model. Rather than a skills training, it is designed as an introduction to the thinking behind TFP and how it is practised. The session will outline the core ideas of the model, including its approach to personality organisation, contracting, and working with affectively dominant material, and will illustrate these through vignettes and brief video material. 

The emphasis will be on giving participants a sense of the feel of TFP: how attention is directed, how interventions are framed, and how therapists work simultaneously with the transference relationship and the patient’s functioning in their life. Time will be left for reflection and discussion, including consideration of points of overlap and difference between TFP and other psychoanalytic and psychodynamic approaches and practicalities of training in TFP. TFP is one of the BPC kitemarked psychotherapies.  

The final part of the session will briefly outline the TFP-UK one-year weekly online TFP teaching seminar, starting in September.  

About the speakers

Jonathan Radcliffe 

Jonathan Radcliffe is a Consultant Clinical Psychologist and psychoanalytic psychotherapist, and Head of the Lewisham Personality Disorder Service at South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust (SLaM). He trained in psychoanalytic psychotherapy at the Lincoln Clinic / British Psychotherapy Foundation (2010). Jonathan is an ISTFP-accredited Transference-Focused Psychotherapy (TFP) Teacher-Supervisor (2019) and teaches on TFP-UK programmes. His clinical and teaching interests include TFP assessment and contracting, the management of risk and acting-out within a psychodynamic frame, and transference and countertransference work with severe personality pathology. 

Laura Liard 

Laura Liard is a Clinical Psychologist and psychotherapist in private practice in Brussels, Belgium. She is an ISTFP-accredited Transference-Focused Psychotherapy (TFP) Teacher-Supervisor (2022) and teaches and supervises clinicians internationally in the TFP model. Laura has particular expertise in helping clinicians translate TFP theory into moment-to-moment clinical technique, including work with dominant affect states, dyads, negative transference, and therapist stance. Her teaching emphasises close attention to the therapeutic interaction, the use of countertransference as clinical information, and the integration of structure and flexibility when working psychoanalytically with complex personality presentations. 

*If you are a psychotherapist or counsellor residing in an active conflict zone, you are eligible to attend this event free of charge (regardless of whether you are a bpf member or not). Please email events@bpf-psychotherapy to enquire about a ticket.