The borderline diagnosis and integration of self

Abstract

To try to encompass what is meant by borderline with parameters that are too delineating can lead to conceptual difficulties and confusion for several reasons: The human psyche is too complex and probably has too much of the quality of a gestalt to be understood adequately by dichotomizing thinking; an individual does not experience himself as operating in discrete units, but as a unified whole; and the most characteristic manifest quality of the borderline picture is its tendency toward a chaotic functioning that somehow always spills over any defining boundaries which are set up to attain conceptual containment. If we then accept our limitations on the precision and order with which we can comprehend it, the understanding of borderline might be supplemented by seeing it in terms of the subjective experience of an integrated self. This offers a more holistic approach that tends not to be so subject to objectifying compartmentalization. It is more in tune with the subjective experiencing a person has of that which defines and moves him in the world. And it offers a referent axis along which the distance one has traveled in the borderline direction might be gleaned. Finally, the relationship of the borderline diagnosis to character disorder might be looked this way: The diagnosis does not refer to a particular character disorder or to a group of disorders. It emerges in all character pathology to the degree that the experiencing of an integrated and whole sense of self, which is at the heart of character structure, is diminished.

Pacientes, problemas e fronteiras: psicanálise e quadros borderline

“…In any case, such events are now well known, both by psychoanalysts as psychiatrists. 1 Another important symptom of the frame would be the lack of identity (Mitchell, 1985;Rosenfeld, 1978); in other words, lack of organization and continuity feeling of features that the individual understands as its own in several aspects, such as sexual desires, work desires, among others. This point is examined in detail by Kernberg (1967), also mentioned by Fonagy (1991), when he talks about a fragmentation in the sense of identity.…”

“…A third symptom that the psychoanalytic literature highlights is the instability of mood (Fonagy, 1991;Mitchell, 1985;Schmideberg, 1947Schmideberg, /1986, especially the impulsive behaviors (Kernberg, 1966) and also unpredictable (Fonagy, 1991). Here, it is possible to notice a convergence with the symptoms described earlier, since the absence of identity can be noticed by the environment, causing the behaviors of the borderline subject to be seen as unpredictable.…”