In this paper the author describes how, in his analytic work with difficult personality disorders, he uses a neo-Spinozan position or attitude of alpha-thinking and functioning to understand, clarify, and so to manage confused and confusing psychosomatic ‘body-mind’ and emotional relations, both internally and inter-personally. Two case examples are given, followed by reflections on technique and on the limits of mourning, transformation and irony. The author suggests that a private, ideational double-aspect, mind-body position may be helpful in working with these analysands. This analytic mode may create a radically different understanding by incorporating a relational system of containment, self-containment, observation and memory.

In addition, the author gives his own version of the aetiology and dynamics of borderline states and relations, and weaves the two cases he reports on into reflections on his countertransferential responses, reactions, inter-actions and ‘reverie’ through the lens of a neo-Spinozan conceptual system.