PEP | Article - A Proposed Revision of the Psychoanalytic Concept of Primitive Mental States, Part II—The Borderline Syndrome-Section 2 the Phenomenology of the Borderline Syndrome2

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Abstract

INVESTIGATORS WHO HAVE STUDIED the borderline have associated syndromic characteristics to this entity in order to define it. The characteristics which each study has elaborated overlap in some areas and diverge in others. Grinker et al. (1968) identify anger as the main or only affect. They find relationships are anaclitic, dependent, complementary, but rarely reciprocal. Borderline patients lack a sense of self-identity, and the depression they experience is characterized more by loneliness than by shame or guilt.

Gunderson and Singer (1975) have elaborated intense affect,