ABSTRACT
Despite Knight’s (1953) seminal paper in which he paradoxically recommended that borderline not be used as a diagnostic term, an enormous amount of research literature concerning borderline psychopathology has emerged in the past 40 years (Grotstein, Solomon, & Lang, 1987). Kernberg’s early work (1966, 1967, 1968) advanced the concept of neurotic, borderline, and psychotic personality organization, culminating in his more recent explication (Kernberg, 1984) of the reality testing, identity, and defensive aspects that demarcate these “levels” of personality. Various character formations are theorized to cut vertically across these horizontal latitudes of development (Kernberg, 1975).
