Psychoanalytic Perspectives

This monograph will undoubtedly prove to be one of the most important published in the widely acclaimed Kris Study Group Monograph series. Using extensive and effective empirical data, the authors challenge the popular notion of the borderline as a separate, clearly delineable pathological entity. Four fully analyzed cases are presented which offer a wealth of relevant and wide-ranging clinical material. From an ego-psychological approach, the authors undertake significant explorations of the defenses and object relations of these patients, as well as of their reality testing and transference phenomena. Subjecting current theories in the existing literature to searching criticism, Abend, Porder, and Willick arrive at a new understanding of the borderline that should affect existing attitudes towards their treatment by psychoanalytic means.

The authors demonstrate that oedipal conflicts are invariably present and etiologically significant in these cases, in conjunction with their preoedipal pathology. They conclude that it becomes extremely difficult, and ultimately counterproductive, to view any specific set of symptoms as characteristically boderline in nature.