ABSTRACT
This chapter demonstrates the value of the concept compromise formation in thinking about diagnosing and diagnoses. It explores the therapeutic value of thinking about psychoanalytic diagnoses as co-constructions. Diagnoses are nouns that are applied to subjects as if they exist as a fact of nature in another human being with whom the analyst is working. From a constructivist perspective, diagnosing is an activity in which the analyst is engaged in collaboration with, and/or in response to, another human being. It is important to remember that in medicine, diseases such as cancers and infections are tangible entities that exist in individuals. The diagnosis “borderline” has an interesting and important history in analysis, elegantly chronicled by Abend, Porder, and Willick. These authors emphasized that there is “a great deal of controversy as to precisely what the term means and how specifically it may be applied as a diagnostic construct”.
