John G. Gunderson

John Gunder Gunderson (June 20, 1942 – January 11, 2019) was a psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, and professor of psychiatry at Harvard University and founder of the Borderline Center at McLean Hospital. His career thereafter shifted towards focus on the treatment of borderline patients.

Gunderson published nearly 250 papers, 100 reviews, and 12 books regarding borderline and other personality disorders. In 1984, he published a major textbook on BPD, titled Borderline Personality Disorder. According to Massachusetts General Hospital, his success led to him being called the "father" of BPD. He led the academic group that described personality disorders in the fourth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). In 2009, McLean Hospital named a treatment center in Cambridge, Massachusetts, after him, called the "Gunderson Residence."

In the latter part of his career, Gunderson developed a treatment model called "Good Psychiatric Management" (or "General Psychiatric Management"), a psychodynamically- and behaviorally-informed psychotherapy for BPD. The development of GPM was based, in part, on research that shows that less intensive, easier-to-learn therapies could be nearly as effective as more developed approaches (DBT, TFP, MBT), and would cater to unmet needs often seen in the clinical setting. Gunderson theorized that patients with BPD suffer from a fundamental interpersonal hypersensitivity and that this problem is at the core of the various symptoms associated with the disorder.

Gunderson was opposed to attempts to obscure the borderline diagnosis through dimensionalization of personality pathology in DSM-5, ultimately arguing that both borderline and antisocial disorders should be classified separately from the rest of the personality disorders due to their clinical significance and empirical validity.

Gunderson is remembered as both a skilled psychotherapist and empirical researcher who attempted to bridge gaps between sometimes-competing approaches to BPD. His work helped open the door to the effective management of a group of patients historically deemed untreatable by traditional psychoanalysis.

Honors and awards 2017: Joseph Zubin Award from the American Psychopathological Association

Personal life

Gunderson was an accomplished artist, with many of his paintings adorning the walls of the Gunderson Residence and offices in the McLean Hospital. He was an avid golfer, gardener, fly fisherman, and played basketball into his 70s. He met his wife, Susan, on a blind date while they were college students. The couple had two children and were married for 53 years.

He died on January 11, 2019, at the age of 76 from prostate cancer in Weston, Massachusetts. Following his death, McLean renamed the BPD Training Institute the "Gunderson Personality Disorders Institute" in his honor.