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The interest in more severe pathology has been simultaneous with an increased interest in concepts of developmental arrest and deviations, object relations, and psychology of the self. The link between personality and the critical role of early childhood has absorbed theoretician and clinician alike. The Narcissistic and Personality Disorders-An Integrated Developmental Approach by james Masterson is the latest book in a series of many by this author on the topic of borderline pathology. In previous publications, Masterson saw the mother of the borderline patient as borderline herself, requiring “the child to resonate with her projections through regressive behavior to defend herself against separation anxiety.” The mother would withdraw out of her needs and “this withdrawal produced the abandonment depression and the developmental arrest in the child.” He now expands his concept by seeing that the necessary libidinal availability of the mother may be lacking for a variety of reasons.
Important to understanding Masterson is his concept of split object relations: WORU-withdrawing object relations part-unit and RORU-rewarding object relations part-unit, both of which are kept separate. He sees these mechanisms as explaining dyadic interactions. Masterson bases much of his conceptual frame on Mahler's separation-individuation process, referring constantly to separation anxiety and often to separation depression.
The book is divided equally between borderline and narcissistic pathology. Masterson distinguishes one from the other, and both from affective pathology, psychosis, psychopathy, and neurosis. In his chapter on narcissistic pathology of the borderline and the false self he states: “My own point of view is that the narcissistic personality disorder is a developmental arrest, since in treatment the patient's abandonment depression or fragmentation of the self can be precipitated either by narcissistic disappointment at the hands of the object, or by his own efforts