ABSTRACT

What is it that attracts, bonds, and keeps these individuals together? This is the pivotal question a clinician must ask when dealing with the

narcissistic/borderline relationship. When paired, these oppositional types appear to maintain a bond in which their repetitive behaviors appear as the enactments of many unresolved wishes and childhood dreams. These two personality types enter into a psychological "dance" in which each fulfills the other's unconscious needs. The revelation is that each partner needs the other to play out his or her own internal object relations drama, as each stirs up some unresolved conflict in the other. For example, when the borderline person is in the presence of his or her object choice, the narcissist, the borderline person experiences that partner as the source of all psychic pain. The borderline person holds to the fantasy that if only he or she were better, the other would meet his or her needs.