The authors note that individuals with borderline personality disorders experience time in distorted ways. Being unable to envision a future, they tend to perceive themselves frozen in the present. This accounts for the urgency and impatience they express in psychotherapy. Effective treatment of borderline conditions is based less on classical interpretations or strategic interventions than on the therapist's simply being there long enough to become a constant object that the patient may experience over time. Patients' initial response to this stance is anger at the frustration of