The psychotic character is a syndrome which may be crystallized from the various 'borderline states'. What distinguishes this syndrome is the relationship

of the ego to inner and outer reality rather than the particular symptomatology, which may be protean, or the likelihood of a frankly psychotic decompensation. In this syndrome the capacity to test reality is relatively intact although feelings of unreality may exist. Unlike the psychotic, the regressions of ego functions are transient and reversible. Object relations are infantile but not as primitive as in psychotics. These basic traits allow for a reasonable level of reality-syntonic adaptation.