Velvet Bricks: The Long-Term Inpatient Treatment of a Borderline Patient

These are the words of a poem Mrs. X wrote shortly after her admission to The Sheppard and Enoch Pratt Hospital in the summer of 1986. The words described her feelings and fears about what hospitalization would mean to her, her fears of change, of healing, and the cost.

This was her first hospitalization, though she had been in psychotherapy for ten years. Her chief complaint upon admission was, “My therapist insisted that I come into the hospital to work on our relationship.”