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self-concept, and the integrated representation of significant others, together with development of sublimatory functions reflected in adaptive expression of emotional needs regarding sexuality, dependency, autonomy, and aggressive/assertive self-affirmation. Internalized object relations that include ethically derived demands and prohibitions transmitted in the early interactions of the infant and child with his psychosocial environment, in particular parents, are integrated into the “Super-ego.” This latter structure is constituted by layers of internalized prohibitions and idealized demands, significantly transformed into an individualized and abstract personal morality (Kernberg, 2004, 2012). Unconscious conflicts on this level of personality organization are inter-systemic conflicts between impulses and defenses, with all three agencies of Id, Ego, and Super-Ego participating. The intrapsychic structures presented by Object Relations Theory constitute a secondary, intrapsychic level of organismic organization, based upon a primary, neurobiological one. It is speculated that primitive mental mechanisms of splitting and their derivatives are based on subcortical limbic developments of separate positive and negative affective systems, and that their potential integration depends on cortical levels of processing of emotional experience originally sharply dissociated (Roth, 2009). Current knowledge of early neurobiological development supports the theoretical assumptions of psychoanalytic Object Relations Theory, and provides a neurobiological basis for the developmental assumptions of personality organization (Gemelli, 2008). The fact that positive and negative affects are strictly separated at lower limbic levels, and can only be integrated at the level of prefrontal and preorbital cortex and anterior cingulate level of elaboration of affective- cognitive experience reinforces the basic tenets of Object Relations Theory. Clinically, the integrative developmental psychoanalytic object relations frame deepens understanding of the multifactorial etiology of the severe (bordeline) personality disorders, including reciprocal interaction of neurobiological features, severe childhood trauma adversely effecting attachment and the capacity for symbolization and reflection. Kernberg (2015) also presents the modified analytic treatment of choice for such conditions, the so called “transference focused” psychotherapy (TFP). TFP is a direct treatment of the personality structure, targeting the normalization of pathological consequences of insecure attachment, play-bonding, and erotic affective systems. Transference focused psychotherapy places central importance on the interpretion of transference distortions from the position of the ‘third’. (See also entry CONFLICT, TRANSFERENCE) V. Bb. Ogden Thomas Ogden (1989) has been able to bring about an original version of the sensitive integration of Klein’s and Bion’s contributions (PS<->D). He extends the work of Bick, Meltzer and Francis Tustin by recognizing a primitive, pre-symbolic, sensory-dominated mode he calls the autistic-contiguous mode : “This mode is a primitive psychological organization operative from birth that generates themost elemental forms of human experience. It is sensory-dominated in which the
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