I Hate You--Don't Leave Me: Understanding the Borderline Personality

by Jerold J. Kreisman

Sustained periods of contentment are foreign to the borderline.

A borderline childhood is frequently a desolate battlefield, scarred with the debris of indifferent, rejecting, or absent parents, emotional deprivation, and chronic abuse. Most studies have found a history of severe psychological, physical, or sexual abuse in many borderline patients. Indeed, a history of mistreatment, witness to violence, or invalidation of experience by parents or primary caregivers distinguishes borderline patients from other psychiatric patients.16,17 These unstable relationships carry over into adolescence and adulthood, where romantic attachments are highly charged and usually short-lived. The borderline will frantically pursue a man (or woman) one day and send him packing the next. Longer romances—usually measured in weeks or months rather than years—are usually filled with turbulence and rage, wonder, and excitement.

A child emotionally, the borderline cannot tolerate human inconsistencies and ambiguities; he cannot reconcile another’s good and bad qualities into a constant, coherent understanding of that person. At any particular moment, one is either “good” or “evil”; there is no in-between, no gray area. Nuances and shadings are grasped with great difficulty, if at all. Lovers and mates, mothers and fathers, siblings, friends, and psychotherapists may be idolized one day, totally devalued and dismissed the next. When the idealized person finally disappoints (as we all do, sooner or later), the borderline must drastically restructure his strict, inflexible conceptualization. Either the idol is banished to the dungeon or the borderline banishes himself in order to preserve the “all-good” image of the other person. This type of behavior, called “splitting,” is the primary defense mechanism employed by the borderline. Technically defined, splitting is the rigid separation of positive and negative thoughts and feelings about oneself and others; that is, the inability to synthesize these feelings. Most individuals can experience ambivalence and perceive two contradictory feeling states at one time; borderlines characteristically shift back and forth, entirely unaware of one emotional state while immersed in another. Splitting creates an escape hatch from anxiety: the borderline typically experiences a close friend or relation (call him “Joe”) as two separate people at different times. One...

In a sense, the borderline is like an emotional explorer who carries only a sketchy map of interpersonal relations; he finds it extremely difficult to gauge the optimal psychic distance from others, particularly significant others. To compensate, he caroms back and forth from clinging dependency to angry manipulation, from gushes of gratitude to fits of irrational anger. He fears abandonment, so he clings; he fears engulfment, so he pushes away. He craves intimacy and is terrified of it at the same time. He winds up repelling those with whom he most wants to connect.

The work world can provide sanctuary from the anarchy of their social relationships. For this reason, borderlines frequently function best in highly structured work environments.

Borderlines are often very intelligent and display striking artistic abilities; fueled by easy access to powerful emotions, they can be creative and successful professionally.

The borderline’s unstable relationships are directly related to his intolerance of separation and fear of intimacy. The borderline is typically dependent, clinging, and idealizing until the lover, spouse, or friend repels or frustrates these needs with some sort of rejection or indifference, then the borderline caroms to the other extreme—devaluation, resistance to intimacy, and outright avoidance. A continual tug-of-war develops between the wish to merge and be taken care of, on the one hand, and the fear of engulfment, on the other.

In relationships, these internal feelings are dramatically translated into intense, shifting, manipulative couplings. The borderline often makes unrealistic demands of others, appearing to observers as spoiled. Manipulativeness is manifested through physical complaints and hypochondriasis, expressions of weakness and helplessness, provocative actions, and masochistic behaviors. Suicidal threats or gestures are often used to obtain attention and rescue. The borderline may use seduction as a manipulative strategy, even with someone known to be inappropriate and inaccessible, such as a therapist or minister. Though very sensitive to others, the borderline lacks true empathy. He may be dismayed to encounter an acquaintance, such as teacher, coworker, or therapist, outside of his usual place of business because it is difficult to conceive of that person as having a separate life. Furthermore, he may not understand or be extremely jealous of his therapist’s separate life, or even of other patients he may encounter. The borderline lacks “object constancy,” the ability to understand others as complex human beings who nonetheless can relate in consistent ways. The borderline experiences another on the basis of his most recent encounter, rather than on a broader-based, consistent series of interactions. Therefore, a constant, predictable perception of another person never emerges—the borderline, as if afflicted with a kind of targeted amnesia, continues to respond to that person as ...

Along with affective instability, anger is the most persistent symptom of BPD over time.32

Borderline anger may represent a cry for help, a testing of devotion, or a fear of intimacy—whatever the underlying factors, it pushes away those whom the borderline needs most. The spouse, friend, lover, or family member who sticks around despite these assaults may be very patient and understanding, or, sometimes, very disturbed himself. In the face of these eruptions, empathy is difficult and the relation must draw on every resource at hand in order to cope (see chapter 5).

It has been observed that borderlines often have borderline mothers, who, in turn, have borderline mothers.

Major traumas—parental loss, neglect, rejection, physical or sexual abuse—during the early years of development can increase the probability of BPD in adolescence and adulthood. Indeed, case histories of borderline patients are typically desolate battlefields, scarred by broken homes, chronic abuse, and emotional deprivation.

Dealing with borderline behavior can be frustrating for everyone in regular contact with the borderline personality because, as we have seen, their explosions of anger, rapid mood swings, suspiciousness, impulsive actions, unpredictable outbursts, self-destructive actions, and inconsistent communications are understandably upsetting to all around them.

Borderlines typically respond to depression, anxiety, frustration, or anger with more layers of these same feelings. Because of the borderline’s perfectionism and tendency to perceive things in black-and-white extremes, he attempts to obliterate unpleasant feelings rather than understand or cope with them. When he finds that he cannot simply erase these bad feelings, he becomes even more frustrated or guilty. Since feeling bad is unacceptable, he feels bad about feeling bad. When this makes him feel worse, he becomes caught in a seemingly bottomless downward spiral.

Adjusting to a world that is continually inconsistent and untrustworthy is a major problem for the borderline. The borderline’s universe lacks pattern and predictability. Friends, jobs, and skills can never be relied upon. The borderline must keep testing and retesting all of these aspects of his life; he is in constant fear that a trusted person or situation will change into the total opposite—absolute betrayal. A hero becomes a devil; the perfect job becomes the bane of his existence. The borderline cannot conceive that individual or situational object constancy can endure. He has no laurels on which to rest. Every day he must begin anew trying desperately to prove to himself that the world can be trusted. Just because the sun has risen in the East for thousands of years does not mean it will happen today. He must see it for himself each and every day.