Masochism and Ego Identity in Borderline States

This horror of waking—this was knowledge. … He tried to fix it and hold it; he kept it there before him so that he might feel the pain. That, at least, belated and bitter had something of the taste of life.— Henry James, The Beast in the Jungle

NOT LONG AGO, A NEW PATIENT reported to me that he had seen the musical, "Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris", twenty-five times since the death of his wife, two years before. I had trouble understanding how anyone could sit through the same play so often, for any reason. Besides that, I wondered what could be making this man so morbidly attracted to words and music that were so bittersweet, cynical, and dysphoric. A few weeks later another patient described his fascination for Bette Middler. "I go to see her every chance I get and every single time I get depressed, but I love it. She represents something raw, primal, screaming, ranting, fuck-it-how-I-look. She magnifies her flaws; she's gut. I want to swallow her up and be her or at least be part of her life. She has power and pain; I want to share some of that." About the same time, still another patient described how a close friend told her something cruel and cutting. My patient was hurt but when the friend apologized the next day, she was vaguely disappointed. "I don't know why but I hate to have to surrender my bad feelings. Just because she was making up to me made me feel I no longer had the right to be upset." And still another patient described the following fantasy: "I wish there was a cause I felt really strong about. A fantasy I have over and over again is that I'm the last Jewish soldier between the Arabs and Tel Aviv and I know I'm going to die for a purpose. I have a smile on my face."

These little vignettes lend themselves to many different interpretations. Most striking, however, is the underlying thread of self-destructive, possibly masochistic attitudes. The recurrent search for pain and obsessional thinking about situatio