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.
In a thorough and well-reasoned set of propositions Meissner attempts a more definitive differentiation than has yet been made between narcissistic personality and borderline conditions. He differentiates the two groups according to the kinds of transferences they form and according to the stability and cohesiveness of the sense of self that they manifest. More important, he attempts a detailed structural differentiation between the two groups involving their differing introjective organizations. Meissner shows that the narcissistic personality has not been as much contaminated by aggressive derivatives, while the borderline person has been unable to integrate the hostile and loving parts of the parental imago because of the unresolved aggressive components stemming from deviant resolutions of the rapprochement crisis. This is because "the narcissistic child does not meet the same degree of parental rejection, disapproval, hostility or destructiveness" as the borderline child does during separation-individuation. Instead "the [narcissistic child's] problem … concerns the loss, potential or actual, of the narcissistic availability of the parent, as separation and the establishment of autonomy assert themselves." Thus,