One of the big losers in these tectonic shifts has been group loyalties—devotion to family, neighborhood, church, occupation, and country. As society continues to foster detachment from people and institutions that provide reassuring rapprochement, individuals are responding in ways that virtually define the borderline syndrome: decreased sense of validated identity, worsening interpersonal relationships, isolation and loneliness, boredom, and (without the stabilizing force of group pressures) impulsivity.
