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THE CURRENT STATE OF THINKING about the borderline personality disorders has been relatively complacent, following as it has upon a period of much chaos and confusion. Kernberg has provided considerable clarity and illumination for the diagnosis and understanding of the personality organization of borderlines in a series of important contributions (1966), (1967), (1968), (1970), (1971), finally culminating in a more or less definitive volume (1975). His formulations have a comprehensiveness and a sweep that make them seem both formidable and definitive. Uncertainties and ambiguities remain, however, and on a variety of fronts a sense of uneasy dissatisfaction has been expressed having to do with not only diagnostic uncertainties, but also theoretical understanding of the borderline syndrome (Dickes, 1974); (Klein, 1975); (Gunderson and Singer, 1975); (Meissner, in preparation; Guze, 1975). In addition, there seem to be certain latent assumptions and ambiguities that enter into the process of identifying, diagnosing, and formulating concepts of borderline pathology.
Terminological ambiguities reflect the underlying problem of whether the borderline entities represent forms of shifting patterns of symptom and defense, or whether they are