Borderline personality spectrum

Abstract

People who receive a diagnosis of borderline personality disorder (BPD) find themselves “at the border” in several ways. They display behaviors that society deems inexplicably mad, and they frequently do so in a way that places them at variance with the Western binary stereotype–masculine and feminine–that is, on the border between so-called masculine and feminine behavior. They teeter on the edge of social acceptability. It is not by chance that this diagnosis is more frequent in women and homosexual, transsexual, transgendered people, and so on, in a society in which the concept of the universal “subject” has been built from the masculine model. Anyone outside of its margins is considered the “other” and can be labeled unhealthy in a society where the difference has been medicalized. The feminization of the borderline category is argued by several theories that suggest the BPD category as a contemporary successor to hysteria, showing that, like hysteria, this diagnosis has expanded into an overinclusive and diffuse category. Another aspect exposed is the large number of patients with BPD with histories of trauma (physical, sexual, etc.) and how sometimes the symptoms that seem to be grouped under the label of BPD represent patterns of adaptation to trauma. The body becomes a “speaking body” (following Foucault’s idea); thus, we consider it essential to address the self-injuries experience, not as a sign of specific diagnosis, but as a way of being in the world and in between the world (body in suffering). Finally, we present some of the current theories that denounce the dominant social norms and the inextricable links of power and their influence in the construction of our identity.