ABSTRACT
In this paper, Green presents a theoretical and clinical model of borderline states (états limites) and explores their functioning within the analytic process. The theoretical level elaborates the limit as a concept that enlarges and complexifies the topographic dimension of Freudian metapsychology, as it articulates the intra-psychic and the inter-subjective. At the clinical/practical level, the limit concept is put to use in defining the psychoanalytic frame (“cadre”, which differs from the Anglo-Saxon notion of setting) and exploring its specificity and potential variations in work with non-neurotic patients. Both levels of conceptualization converge in the “double limit modele”, illustrated by the singular (dis)functioning of analytic process in borderline states.
