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At the borderline level, individuals often have deficits in a sense of self.

Difficulties at the rapprochement phase lead to both neediness and rage.

These individuals may use splitting as a characteristic defense mechanism.

This post is Part 1 in a series on the borderline level of organization.

In contrast to the neurotic level, which is organized around triadic relationships (child, mother, father), those organized at a borderline level are preoccupied with dyadic relationships (child, mother) (Kernberg, 1975).

Developmentally, these people run into significant challenges during the rapprochement period of the separation-individuation phase. During this subphase, children ages 16-24 months begin to experience themselves as separate from their mothers, as they begin to more independently explore the environment (Mahler, Pine, Bergman, 1975). These explorations, which a few months earlier were filled with omnipotent fantasies of safety and continued symbiosis with the perfect, protective mother, are now full of anxiety as the omnipotent fantasy wanes, along with a growing understanding that the child is not an extension of the mother and is therefore small and truly vulnerable to the dangers of the-world-away-from-mom (Mahler et al., 1975).

There is a consequent ambivalence about both exploration and return—the child is both drawn to explore the environment and demanding a welcome reunion, and also is easily frustrated by both the anxieties of exploration and the loss of autonomy that reunion with mom entails (Mahler et al., 1975). The child will periodically and anxiously return to mom during the exploration, seeking reassurance, safety, and joint attention in an effort to allay the child’s anxiety about the dangers of the world. This phase of development is full of pitfalls for both mothers and children. For mothers who have their own dynamic needs to maintain symbiosis with their children, the efforts of the child to separate may be met with overattentive, suffocating enmeshment, or anger and rejection at the “abandonment” of the mother by the child. Both of these reactions will greatly limit the child’s ability to separate successfully from the mother. Some children are temperamentally very........

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