ABSTRACT
Borderline personality disorder (BPD) enjoys the dual distinction of being one of the most written about and talked about conditions in contemporary psychiatry, and of being the only condition among the nearly 400 in the current Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) (1) whose label provides no hint, no semantic handle, as to what sort of condition it is. One might argue that the seven eponymous syndromes of the DSM (Alzheimer’s, Asperger’s, Creutzfeld-Jakob’s, Huntington’s, Pick’s, Rett’s, and Gilles de la Tourette’s) require a bit of study before their nature is clarified, but all the others either stem from common English roots (gambling, binge-eating, sleep disorder) or are decipherable from their Greek or Latin origins (trichotillomania: pathological pulling of hair; insomnia: absence of sleep, etc.). Borderline, when used adjectivally, suggests something that is in close proximity to something else. Indeed, in its first uses in psychiatry, borderline designated either (a) a condition that approximated another, already well-established disorder, or (b) a condition that occupied a region in between two rather indistinctly boundaried levels of mental functioning. As we shall see, the borderline of our current BPD is derived from both these usages.
