Michael S. Porder

Michael S. Porder, M.D. (August 14, 1933 – October 15, 2021), was an American psychoanalyst and psychiatrist best known for his involvement in the New York Psychoanalytic Society & Institute. In 1983, he coauthored the book Borderline Patients: Psychoanalytic Perspectives, a monograph of the institute’s Kris Study Group,

Early life and education

Porder was born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1933. In 1958, he earned his medical degree from Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons. He did his internship in medicine at New England Center Hospital and his residency in psychiatry at Jacobi Hospital. He served as a captain in the United States Army between 1962 and 1964 and was stationed at Fort Ord.

New York Psychoanalytic Society & Institute

Porder joined the New York Psychoanalytic Institute in 1964. Theodore J. Jacobs, a member of the institute since 1967, has described the types of patients Porder worked with as those "whose basic fundamental growth and structure of the mind was disturbed early on so that they did not develop... a solid ego." named after Austrian psychoanalyst Ernst Kris. Porder participated in a Kris Study Group on sublimation (1967–1969); one on early physical illnesses, congenital deformities, and their relationships to analyzability (1969–1971); and one on borderline states (1973–1977).

Overall, Porder’s work has been characterized as being rigorously based on case material rather than on theory or philosophy, an approach that placed him within a larger movement of data-driven analysis that was gaining favor at the institute over theory-based, European schools. and it assesses them with an ego psychological approach, Porder himself also considered the book a challenge to Kernberg, particularly on the specificity of, in Kernberg’s terms, “borderline personality organization.” discussions which gained further steam due to the influx of ideas from Europe including Kleinian analysis. and initial reactions were polarized. Some reviewers critiqued the theoretical framework as well as the selection of patients, which excluded severe cases. In 1985, Melvin Singer commented on the selection of patients, stating that, “Unfortunately, by choosing healthier cases to salvage an analytic data base, the authors have sacrificed the opportunity to directly address the major conceptual and treatment dilemmas.” object relations, and modern conflict theory. He also published meeting notes and findings of the New York Psychoanalytic Institute, authored book chapters including on the topic of identification, lectured on psychoanalytic viewpoints of borderline patients, published on clinical practice, and wrote book reviews. He was a popular supervisor and teacher at the New York Psychoanalytic Institute, and as a clinician, he was known for his flexibility and his leveraging of personal values as a means of improving the lives of patients in human terms. His 1987 publication in The Psychoanalytic Quarterly, titled "Projective Identification: An Alternative Hypothesis,"

Abend, S. M. & Porder, M. S. (1986). "Identification in the Neuroses". The International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 67(2):201–208.