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This paper sets out to consider the two issues of gender and the borderline in terms of each other, looking at what the two notions have in common and how the discussion of one may illuminate the other. Samuels establishes that aggression is a theme common to the two debates, and discusses whether aggression is innate and linked to gender, and so whether there are innate feminine and masculine psychologies. He discusses the issues of gender certainty and gender confusion, suggesting that the interplay between them is impossible to achieve for the borderline person who has such problems in holding paradox and ambivalence. He suggests further that the need to construct psychologies based on gender reflects our own need for certainty in relation to what we attribute to masculinity and femininity.
Samuels then proceeds to consider the specific contribution of the father to the borderline personality disorder, looking at the father's relationship with his son and daughter separately. It is Samuels' assertion that the father's erotic relationship with his daughter-a relationship which is neither overtly incestuous nor too distant—allows the daughter to break out of the bondage of equating womanhood with