Jerold J. Kreisman

I Hate You, Don't Leave Me, written with Hal Straus, was the first book to explain borderline personality disorder to the people living with it and living around it. That was 1989, when the diagnosis was barely discussed outside clinics, was applied mostly to women, and was frequently used as a dismissal. Kreisman is a psychiatrist who has treated the condition for decades, and the book has been revised repeatedly as the treatment evidence changed. Its lasting contribution is a vocabulary for a pattern families previously had no way to name.