Paulina Kernberg
Encyclopedia
Chilean American
Chilean Americans are United States citizens or residents of Chilean origin. They number about 124,116 in 2009.In 2000, close to 14,000 lived in the states of Florida and California, while around 16,330 lived in the states of New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and other New England states...
child psychiatrist, an authority on personality disorder
Personality disorder
Personality disorders, formerly referred to as character disorders, are a class of personality types and behaviors. Personality disorders are noted on Axis II of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders or DSM-IV-TR of the American Psychiatric Association.Personality disorders are...
s, and a professor at Cornell University
Cornell University
Cornell University is an Ivy League university located in Ithaca, New York, United States. It is a private land-grant university, receiving annual funding from the State of New York for certain educational missions...
.
Kernberg was born in Chile
Chile
Chile ,officially the Republic of Chile , is a country in South America occupying a long, narrow coastal strip between the Andes mountains to the east and the Pacific Ocean to the west. It borders Peru to the north, Bolivia to the northeast, Argentina to the east, and the Drake Passage in the far...
and became a U.S. citizen in 1968. She was married for 52 years to Otto F. Kernberg
Otto F. Kernberg
Otto Friedmann Kernberg is a psychoanalyst and professor of psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medical College. He is most widely known for his psychoanalytic theories on borderline personality organization and narcissistic pathology...
, a professor of psychiatry at Cornell.
Paulina Kernberg's work included studies on the emotional effects of divorce, where she noted the trauma from divorce was second only to a parent's death in the perception of children involved. Following this work, she helped found a clinical program for children of divorced families at the New York-Presbyterian Hospital. She was the director of the Residency Program in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at the New York Presbyterian Hospital, Payne Whitney Westchester-Weill Cornell Medical Center since 1978, until her death. She was a teacher at the Columbia University Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research, where she was a supervising and training analyst in Psychoanalysis and Child Psychoanalysis. She authored over 100 articles and chapters in child psychiatry and psychoanalysis, and presented internationally and in multiple languages.
Kernberg was noted for her work evaluating Elián González
Elián González
The custody and immigration status of a young Cuban boy, Elián González , was at the center of a heated 2000 controversy involving the governments of Cuba and the United States, González's father, Juan Miguel González Quintana, González's other relatives in Miami, Florida, and in Cuba, and Miami's...
, the 6-year-old Cuban boy at the center of an international custody battle in 2000 in what quickly became an inflammatory issue among Cuban-Americans and in the United States Congress
United States Congress
The United States Congress is the bicameral legislature of the federal government of the United States, consisting of the Senate and the House of Representatives. The Congress meets in the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C....
. She described and proved that children show specific patterns of behavior in the playroom and repeat certain play themes according to their diagnosis. She also developed a questionnaire that the child psychiatrist uses during an assessment interview to measure the level of personality integration in adolescents, depending on their capacity to relate to peers and friends. She developed a standardized interview that is done to the mother and child when they are in front of a mirror, and also developed a similar instrument to assess the personality integration of adolescents. Kernberg was the first who described and studied with statistical analysis the early signs of personality disorders, which she said were already present and treatable in children and adolescents.