Borderline Disorder, Altered States of Consciousness, and Glossolalia

In several prior publications (Masterson, 1972, 1975, 1976; Masterson and Rinsley, 1975; Carter and Rinsley, 1977; Rinsley, 1977, 1978, 1979) a concept of borderline psychopathology was developed, based upon the antecedent work of Jacobson (1954, 1964), Kernberg (1966, 1967, 1975), and Mahler (Mahler, Pine, and Bergman, 1975). Borderline psychopathology was considered to result from a specific developmental arrest or fixation during the phase of separation-individuation, having its inception during the differentiation subphase (3 to 8 months) and reaching its peak during the rapprochement subphase (10 to 16 months). The specific arrest or fixation found expression in a persistent failure to differentiate self- and object-representations (Kernberg, 1972), based in turn upon a particular form of mother-infant interaction during this critical developmental period, viz., the mother's withdrawal or rejection in the face of the child's efforts toward separation-individuation coupled with her reward (reinforcement) of the child's regressive, dependent, anaclitic-clinging behavior. Such a