Borderline Personality Disorder
Borderline Personality
Disorder (BPD) is one of the most controversial diagnoses in psychology today.
Since it was first introduced in the DSM, psychologists and psychiatrists have
been trying to give the somewhat amorphous concepts behind BPD a concrete form.
Kernberg's explication of what he calls Borderline Personality
Organization is the most general, while Gunderson, though a
psychoanalyst, is considered by many to have taken the most scientific approach
to defining BPD. The Diagnostic Interview for Borderlines and the DIB-Revised were
developed from research done by Gunderson, Kolb, and Zanarini. Finally, there is
the "official" DSM-IV definition.
Some researchers, like Judith Herman, believe that BPD is a name given to a
particular manifestation of post-traumatic stress disorder: in Trauma and
Recovery, she theorizes that when PTSD takes a form that emphasizes heavily
its elements of identity and relationship disturbance, it gets called BPD; when
the somatic (body) elements are emphasized, it gets called hysteria, and when
the dissociative/deformation of consciousness elements are the focus, it gets
called DID/MPD. Others believe that the term "borderline personality" has been
so misunderstood and misused that trying to refine it is pointless and suggest
instead simply scrapping the term.
What causes Borderline Personality Disorder?
It would be remiss to
discuss BPD without including a comment about Linehan's work. In contrast to the
symptom list approaches detailed below, Linehan has developed a comprehensive
sociobiological theory which appears to be borne out by the successes found in
controlled studies of her Dialectical Behavioral Therapy.
Linehan theorizes that borderlines are born with an innate biological
tendency to react more intensely to lower levels of stress than others and to
take longer to recover. They peak "higher" emotionally on less provocation and
take longer coming down. In addition, they were raised in environments in which
their beliefs about themselves and their environment were continually devalued
and invalidated. These factors combine to create adults who are uncertain of the
truth of their own feelings and who are confronted by three basic dialectics
they have failed to master (and thus rush frantically from pole to pole of):
- vulnerability vs invalidation
- active passivity (tendency to be passive when confronted with a problem
and actively seek a rescuer) vs apparent competence (appearing to be capable
when in reality internally things are falling apart)
- unremitting crises vs inhibited grief.
DBT tries to teach
clients to balance these by giving them training in skills of mindfulness,
interpersonal effectiveness, distress tolerance, and emotional regulation.
Kernberg's Borderline Personality Organization
Diagnoses of BPO are
based on three categories of criteria. The first, and most important, category,
comprises two signs:
- the absence of psychosis (i.e., the ability to perceive reality
accurately)
- impaired ego integration - a diffuse and internally contradictory concept
of self. Kernberg is quoted as saying, "Borderlines can describe themselves
for five hours without your getting a realistic picture of what they're
like."
The second category is termed "nonspecific signs" and includes such things as
low anxiety tolerance, poor impulse control, and an undeveloped or poor ability
to enjoy work or hobbies in a meaningful way.
Kernberg believes that borderlines are distinguished from neurotics by the
presence of "primitive defenses." Chief among these is splitting, in which a
person or thing is seen as all good or all bad. Note that something which is all
good one day can be all bad the next, which is related to another symptom:
borderlines have problems with object constancy in people -- they read each
action of people in their lives as if there were no prior context; they don't
have a sense of continuity and consistency about people and things in their
lives. They have a hard time experiencing an absent loved one as a loving
presence in their minds. They also have difficulty seeing all of the actions
taken by a person over a period of time as part of an integrated whole, and tend
instead to analyze individual actions in an attempt to divine their individual
meanings. People are defined by how they lasted interacted with the borderline.
Other primitive defenses cited include magical thinking (beliefs that
thoughts can cause events), omnipotence, projection of unpleasant
characteristics in the self onto others and projective identification, a process
where the borderline tries to elicit in others the feelings s/he is having.
Kernberg also includes as signs of BPO chaotic, extreme relationships with
others; an inability to retain the soothing memory of a loved one; transient
psychotic episodes; denial; and emotional amnesia. About the last, Linehan says,
"Borderline individuals are so completely in each mood, they have great
difficulty conceptualizing, remembering what it's like to be in another mood."
Gunderson's conception of BPD
Gunderson, a psychoanalyst, is
respected by researchers in many diverse areas of psychology and psychiatry. His
focus tends to be on the differential diagnosis of Borderline Personality
Disorder, and Cauwels gives Gunderson's criteria in order of their
importance:
- Intense unstable relationships in which the borderline always ends up
getting hurt. Gunderson admits that this symptom is somewhat general, but
considers it so central to BPD that he says he would hesitate to diagnose a
patient as BPD without its presence.
- Repetitive self-destructive behavior, often designed to prompt rescue.
- Chronic fear of abandonment and panic when forced to be alone.
- Distorted thoughts/perceptions, particularly in terms of relationships and
interactions with others.
- Hypersensitivity, meaning an unusual sensitivity to nonverbal
communication. Gunderson notes that this can be confused with distortion if
practitioners are not careful (somewhat similar to Herman's statement that,
while survivors of intense long-term trauma may have unrealistic notions of
the power realities of the situation they were in, their notions are likely to
be closer to reality than the therapist might think).
- Impulsive behaviors that often embarrass the borderline later.
- Poor social adaptation: in a way, borderlines tend not to know or
understand the rules regarding performance in job and academic settings.
The Diagnostic Interview for Borderlines, Revised
Gunderson and his
colleague, Jonathan Kolb, tried to make the diagnosis of BPD by constructing a
clinical interview to assess borderline characteristics in patients. The DIB was
revised in 1989 to sharpen its ability to differentiate between BPD and other
personality disorders. It considers symptoms that fall under four main headings:
- Affect
- chronic/major depression
- helplessness
- hopelessness
- worthlessness
- guilt
- anger (including frequent expressions of anger)
- anxiety
- loneliness
- boredom
- emptiness
- Cognition
- odd thinking
- unusual perceptions
- nondelusional paranoia
- quasipsychosis
- Impulse action patterns
- substance abuse/dependence
- sexual deviance
- manipulative suicide gestures
- other impulsive behaviors
- Interpersonal relationships
- intolerance of aloneness
- abandonment, engulfment, annihilation fears
- counterdependency
- stormy relationships
- manipulativeness
- dependency
- devaluation
- masochism/sadism
- demandingness
- entitlement
The DIB-R is the most influential and
best-known "test" for diagnosing BPD. Use of it has led researchers to identify
four behavior patterns they consider peculiar to BPD: abandonment, engulfment,
annihilation fears; demandingness and entitlement; treatment regressions; and
ability to arouse inappropriately close or hostile treatment relationships.
The DSM-IV gives these nine criteria;
a diagnosis requires that the subject present with at least five of these. In
I Hate You -- Don't Leave Me! Jerold Kriesman and Hal Straus refer to BPD
as "emotional hemophilia; [a borderline] lacks the clotting mechanism needed to
moderate his spurts of feeling. Stimulate a passion, and the borderline
emotionally bleeds to death."
Traits involving emotions:
Quite frequently people with BPD have a very
hard time controlling their emotions. They may feel ruled by them. One
researcher (Marsha Linehan) said, "People with BPD are like people with third
degree burns over 90% of their bodies. Lacking emotional skin, they feel agony
at the slightest touch or movement."
1. Shifts in mood lasting only a few hours.
2. Anger that is inappropriate, intense or uncontrollable.
Traits involving behavior:
3. Self-destructive acts, such as
self-mutilation or suicidal threats and gestures that happen more than once
4. Two potentially self-damaging impulsive behaviors. These could include
alcohol and other drug abuse, compulsive spending, gambling, eating disorders,
shoplifting, reckless driving, compulsive sexual behavior.
Traits involving identity
5. Marked, persistent identity disturbance
shown by uncertainty in at least two areas. These areas can include self-image,
sexual orientation, career choice or other long-term goals, friendships, values.
People with BPD may not feel like they know who they are, or what they think, or
what their opinions are, or what religion they should be. Instead, they may try
to be what they think other people want them to be. Someone with BPD said, "I
have a hard time figuring out my personality. I tend to be whomever I'm with."
6. Chronic feelings of emptiness or boredom. Someone with BPD said, "I
remember describing the feeling of having a deep hole in my stomach. An
emptiness that I didn't know how to fill. My therapist told me that was from
almost a "lack of a life". The more things you get into your life, the more
relationships you get involved in, all of that fills that hole. As a borderline,
I had no life. There were times when I couldn't stay in the same room with other
people. It almost felt like what I think a panic attack would feel like."
Traits involving relationships
7. Unstable, chaotic intense
relationships characterized by splitting (see below).
8. Frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment
- Splitting: the self and others are viewed as "all good" or "all bad."
Someone with BPD said, "One day I would think my doctor was the best and I
loved her, but if she challenged me in any way I hated her. There was no
middle ground as in like. In my world, people were either the best or the
worst. I couldn't understand the concept of middle ground."
- Alternating clinging and distancing behaviors (I Hate You, Don't Leave
Me). Sometimes you want to be close to someone. But when you get close it
feels TOO close and you feel like you have to get some space. This happens
often.
- Great difficulty trusting people and themselves. Early trust may have been
shattered by people who were close to you.
- Sensitivity to criticism or rejection.
- Feeling of "needing" someone else to survive
- Heavy need for affection and reassurance
- Some people with BPD may have an unusually high degree of interpersonal
sensitivity, insight and empathy
9. Transient, stress-related paranoid ideation or severe dissociative
symptoms
This means feeling "out of it," or not being able to remember what you said
or did. This mostly happens in times of severe stress.
Miscellaneous attributes of people with BPD:
- People with BPD are often bright, witty, funny, life of the party.
- They may have problems with object constancy. When a person leaves (even
temporarily), they may have a problem recreating or remembering feelings of
love that were present between themselves and the other. Often, BPD patients
want to keep something belonging to the loved one around during separations.
- They frequently have difficulty tolerating aloneness, even for short
periods of time.
- Their lives may be a chaotic landscape of job losses, interrupted
educational pursuits, broken engagements, hospitalizations.
- Many have a background of childhood physical, sexual, or emotional abuse
or physical/emotional neglect.
