ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on borderline mechanisms of functioning as seen in the patients in a psychoanalytically-orientated therapy group, and presents some recommendations and provisos. The early stages of psychoanalytic enquiry into borderline conditions began with clinical descriptions of a group of patients who occupied a position midway between neurosis and psychosis. The physicality of the buildings and the structure of the NHS also provide important containment for the therapist. Borderline patients are quick to sense anxiety in the therapist, who is of course the main source of psychological containment, in partnership with his or her intellectual and theoretical stance—that provided by a substantial personal therapy and good training. Dependence on ‘the group’ can often be tolerated where dependence on the therapist is resented and denied, leading to an envious rejection of the therapist’s greater understanding and psychologically-educated point of view. Group patients are strikingly better able to bear plain speaking from fellow members than they can from a therapist.
