ALONENESS AND BORDERLINE PSYCHOPATHOLOGY - POSSIBLE RELEVANCE OF CHILD-DEVELOPMENT ISSUES

  • 1 January 1979
    • journal article
    • research article
    • Vol. 60  (1) , 83-96
Abstract
Aloneness is a common event in the lives of borderline patients, especially those closer to the psychotic spectrum. This experience is an intrinsic aspect of the borderline personality defect and consists of a relative or total inability to remember positive images or fantasies of sustaining people in the patient''s present or past life, or being overwhelmed by negative memories and images of these people. The development of borderline aloneness is related to a possible developmental failure. A major borderline vulnerability may be the tenuous achievement of the capacity for affective object permanence and its regressive loss to recognition memory or earlier when under specific stresses. Hypotheses are related to possible empathic parental failures during the substages of separation-individuation. The treatment implications of the formulations are discussed, with an emphasis on the clarification of the need for the therapist''s availability and the use of transitional objects during times of the patient''s loss of his affective cognitive capacities. These regressive experiences often emerge as a core transference manifestation during psychoanalytic therapy with borderline patients and often become the basis of significant therapeutic work.

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