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This paper is an attempt to relate Babineau's concept of the 'compulsive border crosser' to our present-day knowledge of the unconscious dynamics of the borderline personality and to my
previous paper on border symbolism. It becomes apparent that the crossing of borders, and boundaries as such, have a powerful emotional effect on us due to our having had to negotiate the early phase of separation and individuation in our infancy, and that the less well a person had emerged from that crucial phase, the more intense his or her feelings are likely to be about borders, and the more apt he or she is going to be to act out the earliest conflicts by the actual crossing of borders or immigration. The feelings involved in the failure of separation and individuation (fear, rage, emptiness, helplessness, guilt and abandonment depression) and the defence mechanisms operating to ward them off (splitting, denial, acting out, obsessional defences, projection) are evident in Babineau's 'compulsive border crossers' as they are in our borderline patients. The theories of Mahler and of Masterson are made use of in this connexion. Finally, the psychohistorical perspective is given of border disputes and problems in Africa (specifically, Nigeria), in Ireland (the terrorists of the Irish Republican Army) and in Israel (the problems of withdrawal from the Sinai).