You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
The manner in which conflicts are resolved in borderline patients reflects, in some particulars, coping strategies common to all patients; in other particulars, tendencies peculiar to, or grossly exaggerated in, the borderline domain. Here we shall focus on cognitive styles, defensive patterns and behavioral tendencies encountered with special frequency in those who function at the borderline level.
Elsewhere, I have outlined a number of different, popular usages of the term “borderline” (Stone, 1981): one, describing a relatively unvarying level of adaptive function (Kernberg, 1967, 1977); another, defining in objectifiable terms a clinical syndrome, distinguishable phenomenologically from the neuroses and from schizophrenia (Gunderson, 1975, 1978); and a third, depicting conditions in the penumbra of, but genetically closely related to, the major heredofamilial psychoses of schizophrenia and manic-depression (Kety, 1968; Rosenthal, 1975; Akiskal, 1981). The current DSM-III description of “borderline personality” represents only the “unstable borderline,” composed of half the items of the checklist devised by Spitzer et al. (1979), the other half of which consisted of schizotypal items, originally conceived of as ingredients of a “borderline schizophrenia.” These items are reproduced in the DSM-III under the label “schizotypal personality,” where the word “borderline” no longer appears.