the borderline personality disorder as an allegory of our times
So much has been made about the borderline personality disorder, that I just want to contain it and call it in "extreme hysteria" in the old school nosography, but more rigorously, it should just be called an allegory of intersubjectivity in our late capitalist, hyperconsumerist, tightly, but badly administered world. On the "borderline" between psychosis and neurosis, these folks are everywhere, and so are their protestations! I find them very powerful, that is, in their ability to suck up all my powers of reason and faculty for outrage -- putting me on the borderline as well -- between despair and cynicism.
Here are various things I have heard from psychiatrists and some psychoanalysts about the borderline personality:
1. They are immediately divisive in any group -- dividing people into virulent enemies or avid supporters.
2. They are always the victim of vast conspiracies to undermine their credibility, authority and pleasures.
3. They never, ever are responsible for their own situations. Accountability is designed to persecute them.
4. They are never recognized enough, their efforts always go unrecognized, their pain and suffering have no comparison.
5. Other people have bad intentions.
OK, I know that this is a very, very ad hoc list. There are many more technical ways of describing this disorder, but let's just stop here for now because I see it getting of control already.
Here are various things I have heard from psychiatrists and some psychoanalysts about the borderline personality:
1. They are immediately divisive in any group -- dividing people into virulent enemies or avid supporters.
2. They are always the victim of vast conspiracies to undermine their credibility, authority and pleasures.
3. They never, ever are responsible for their own situations. Accountability is designed to persecute them.
4. They are never recognized enough, their efforts always go unrecognized, their pain and suffering have no comparison.
5. Other people have bad intentions.
OK, I know that this is a very, very ad hoc list. There are many more technical ways of describing this disorder, but let's just stop here for now because I see it getting of control already.
posted by ljhk | 1:00 PM
8 Comments:
Yes, I think a borderline personality is "immediately divisive," irrespective of hardly knowing the details over which one becomes divisive (and angry). The mouth flies open and the foot flies in to fill that void. My mother once called this 'contrary' behavior. She, I think, probably spoke of my grandmother. Yet, I think the borderline personality has more quirks (dangerous ones) than contrariness.
I think American culture breeds borderline behavior. With so many people on the edge with job, home, and farm losses, no wonder people feel edgy and paranoid. Somehow, I think this is fast becoming a true nationwide ailment. Yet,borderline behavior sometimes masquerades as 'concerned citizenship,' or 'good old American distrust of government meddling,' you name it and there's a masking expression for it. In themselves, these things are good, but when does it go too far?
The culture embraces--maybe unwittingly--this borderline thing, yet almost always under the guise of something else. Oh well, maybe under Capitalism someone will find a clever way to commodify borderline behaviors (is that already in place?), mainstream it, make it paletable for the masses instead of a mental disorder that warrants a trip to a psychiatrist.--Diane
Oh, it's much more than just contrary behavior -- the borderline separates Others into enemies and recruits or potential recruits -- in an endless war for its own domination, which is seen as a natural right.
sound familiar ???
Yes. That sounds all too familiar.
I am sorry about the length of this, oh well. You mentioned feeling as though your rationale was being "sucked up" when dealing with a borderline personality (BP). Yet, that is what dealing with a BP entails—a loss of tremendous amounts of energy, time, self-respect, and often money. Dealing with a nut will drain the life from you. All your emotions will be spent; your physical well-being trampled upon; and, what you know of reason will get turned upside down in their system of inverted logic. Afterwards, you’ll feel like drinking a glass of whiskey (or two) or taking to your bed for a long rest. You’ll feel as though you’ve run a marathon. Sometimes a BP will make you feel as though you want to harm yourself, maybe kill yourself, because through the lens of their nuttiness you will disconnect from logic, from emotion, from caring, from love, and you think that something is seriously wrong with you. Of course, a BP will place burdens upon you, but beware of making quick apologies or being too quick to sympathize. Once you start feeling guilty from a run-in with a BP, they’ve hooked you! Like a dog that sniffs out fear in an opponent, they are pros when it comes to sniffing out compassion or guilt in their victims. I think that is why some say that the BP is the hardest disorder for a psychiatrist to treat. They hook the psychiatrist in their little intellectual games of cat and mouse.
BPs have their own self-generated logic. This has nothing to do with anything rational, because a BP has developed his or her own highly personalized version of reality, a murky streaming-video dream world where they imagine persecuting demons around every corner. Almost everyone falls into the demon category. It won’t help to tell them, “It’s all in your head,” or “That’s not what I meant!” or “That’s not the way it is!” or this one: “Be reasonable!” You cannot reason with them; yet, its easy to drift into their shadow world of accusations, lies, loop-de-loop thinking, and sometimes violence, later emerging in an exhaustive funk like nothing you’ve ever experienced before.
Thanks for the elaboration of the BP experience. Some one reminded me recently that from a strictly lacanian pov, the diagnosis should be extreme hysteria -- I think that's what he meant anyway, which made me have a little more sympathy for the BP's, but it's also made me more hardened about being rigorous about controlling my guilty and compassionate affect around them.
My relation with the BP is about my own narcissism: I want to prove to BP's that I am a good person, sympathetic, the whole nine yards, when that is precisely the problem. BP's exploit sympathy and manipulate compassion as a way of CONTROLLING everyone around them. Whoever they cannot control becomes immediately EVIL.
I hate being seen as EVIL. I've realized that that is my problem -- I try to engage them. Today I dodged two BP bullets and whew! It was hard, but I did it! I am a BP magnet! It's written all over my face -- for BP's anyway -- SUCKER for your story!
Thanks to you, my blog commentators! You've steeled my resolve so that when BP #1 writes, "Call me, I miss you!" I run for the hills instead and when BP#2 rustles papers ostentatiously, hoping I will say sympathetically, "Busy day hunh? " I just walk on by.
Last month I received a scathing, hateful email from a BP who I've known for years. This after receiving the "Let's get together, I'm lonely" email previously. I am struggling with the things that this person said and am so glad that I'm not the only one who doesn't remember being abusive or persecuting a BP. Knowing that I'm the last in a long line of people who have been cut off because they were considered evil didn't make me feel better. Knowing that there are others out there who have dealt with BPs does. Thanks for letting me know it's not me.
I'm new to hearing about this diagnosis. Have a borderline in my life who makes up lies about me. How do you defend yourself against them? Made the mistake of being sympathetic to this person and the feelings they expressed to me they projected onto me and said I felt that! How does someone become borderline? It seems the mother and daughter are both like this. Is is learned or like bipolar inherited? Now I just avoid this person as there is absolutely no reasoning with them but she is the mother of my grandchildren.It means I can't see them.