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Then once again that cursed laugh bursts forth:
a sinner sinks into my arms!
Then do I laugh! laugh!
I cannot weep, but only shriek, rave, storm, rage,
in an ever-returning night of madness.
This is my (1983, 1984, 1987, 1988a, 1988b) sixth paper in a series that attempts to examine certain aspects of feminine psychology. Using Wagner's character of Kundry as an example, I will try to show how her rage and borderline behavior are explained intuitively by Wagner as based on conflict and guilt rather than on an irreparable ego deficit. The current psychiatric literature contains an unresolved debate between those like Abend et. al. (1983), who would agree with Wagner, and those like Akiskal (1981) and others reviewed by Gunderson and Phillips (1991), who view the borderline condition as genetic or biochemical in origin with deficits in either impulse or affect regulation. Clearly the therapist's approach to borderline manifestations of feminine rage and self-destruction will be based on his or her position in this debate. Psychoanalytic exploration will be indicated by the former position while psychopharmacology and supportive or behavioral therapy will be emphasized by the latter position.
Lacan (Mitchell and Rose 1992) points out that while both men and women are subjected in childhood into the cultural mainstream during oedipization, there is a fundamental difference in that women come to represent lack and negativity; the term feminine, he says, comes to mean this during the insertion of men and women into the symbolic or linguistic