Borderline Personality Disorder: A Psychological Analysis

When it was first described, the disorder did not have its own category, and the term “borderline”, initially designated patients, who were at the border of two diseases: not sufficiently sick to be considered psychotic, yet too disturbed to follow a psychoanalytic treatment for neuroses (Bateman). It was Adolph Stern, an American psychoanalyst, who coined the term “the border line group” in 1938, first described most of the symptoms and suggested possible causes for its development (Gunderson). He was followed in 1953 by Robert Knight, who suggested that people with borderline personality disorder are impaired in their perception of the world around them and how they respond to it (Gunderson), having what he named “borderline states”. His
In doing so, he was trying to define the “borderline syndrome” and find its causes, thus recognizing that the disease had its own category. Conclusions from his study fueled the next big step with psychiatrists Margaret Singer and John Gunderson, in 1975, publishing an article on borderline disorder, in which they defined it and described its main symptoms. Gunderson also published a structured interview, with specific questions which helped diagnose accurately borderline personality disorder (Gunderson). The disease was no longer seen as a “syndrome”, but rather as a personality disorder. As of 1980, borderline personality disorder was officially recognized as a psychiatric diagnosis and was introduced in the DSM-III
In the general population of Canada, recent studies estimate the lifetime prevalence of borderline disorder as 5.9%, in contrast with older studies, which indicated 1.4% (Grant), an increase reflecting better screening processes. The same increase in prevalence has been recorded globally. New research has found that the incidence of borderline personality disorder is the same in women (6.2%) and in men (5.6%), whereas up to 2005, the disease was found to be 3 times more common in women than in men (Sansone). Borderline personality is diagnosed mainly in adults because the personality of adolescents is still developing and it tends to “burn out” in the older people (65+) (Mordekar & Spence). The disorder is present in all ethnic groups and in all cultures; however there are no conclusive studies that can indicate its prevalence with certainty and the data is contradictory (McGilloway). From the few studies to date, borderline personality was found to be less common in Hispanic men and women, Asian women (Grant) and in African-American men and women, possibly due to misdiagnosis (McGilloway), but higher in Native American groups (Grant). In a study conducted in the United States on immigrant patients hospitalized for psychiatric emergencies, it was found that the sub-Saharan population had a low incidence of