What does “Borderline” Mean?

Fromm, M. Gerard Ph.D. | 4.21.2008

The word “borderline,” unlike other clinical descriptive terms, has no obvious affective or action referent in the patient. This observation may help in understanding the kind of misalliance so endemic to work with such patients so diagnosed. The possibility that the diagnosing of the “borderline” might reflect a misrecognition of who has what problem within an analytic treatment, that it might seriously affect the frame of the treatment, and that it might be an act of projective identification by the analyst we explored. The author suggests that “Borderline” pathology is not an entity, but rather the vast developmental territory of severe personality disturbance. He argues that Winnicott’s theoretical contributions to an understanding of the psychopathology of the dyad, particularly around boundary development, are especially helpful.

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