There is little doubt that the borderline personality disorder has become the psychiatric disorder of our time. I am able to think of some 30 books on the subject that have appeared in the last two decades. Psychiatric journals regularly feature articles on empirical studies of borderline patients, and psychoanalytic journals are teeming with clinical case reports and discourses on the developmental and dynamic etiology of the borderline personality disorder. It is now estimated that somewhere between 15% and 25% of patients seen in clinical practice may be diagnosed as borderline (Gunderson & Zanarini, 1987). This figure is certainly substantial, but it is