The Borderline Cases and the Boundaries of Psychoanalytic Technique: Subversion and Healing in the Foundations of Psychoanalysis

Abstract

In this paper we seek to characterize borderline cases as a symptomatic framework elicited by the growing sociocultural contingencies since modernity - implications that we now call contemporary. We point to the relevance of a constant subversion, overcoming or transgression aspect of the classical technical recommendations in psychoanalysis in the sense of what Ferenczi called technical elasticity. We imply thinking of subversion as a typical mode of functioning in psychoanalysis because it can be identified in fundamental aspects of psychoanalytic theory. In conclusion, psychoanalysis’s peculiar relation to limits gives it a space that is constantly open to technical creativity.