Psychological Scenarios and Indicators of Non-Equilibrium State of the Person at the Borderline Situation

Abstract

The paper describes the structural and procedural picture of the unity of the non-equilibrium state of the individual and a borderline situation. The subject of the study was limited to the situation of loss, for which it was necessary to identify possible scenarios and systematize psychological indicators. The study employed an integrative analysis and synthesis of theoretical and applied works in the fields of personality psychology, crisis and clinical psychology, psychotherapy, and psychological counseling. The unity of one’s state and situation appeared to provide the psychological links of the event, one’s personal predispositions, interpretations, experience, and behavior. The situation unfolds in the external and internal (mental state) reality, which do not coincide. An essential role in correlating of information about the state of the internal and the external and the emergence of a particular state belongs to the psychological boundaries of the individual. The situation of loss reflects the disintegration of one’s internal and external realities and the psychological impasse: the time-space "in between" the previous ego, the future ego and the present ego, which is partially destroyed. The uncontrolled value-semantic "hanging" correlates with the critical non-equilibrium state of a person. The content markers of their unity are confusion, ambivalence, "breakdown" of the ego boundaries, temporal effects, semantic disregulation, disintegration, alienation, and a burnout. Intolerance to ambivalence of a situation means getting into a border situation. The possibility of a constructive or destructive way out of this situation is indicated by affective expansion or semantic dysregulation and disintegration of the personality. Leaving a borderline situation behind requires a change of the state, attitudes, values, and meanings by restoring the eroded or destroyed boundaries of the ego. For this purpose, the borders and the situation connected with them must acquire the status of a problem and a "place" of opportunity in one’s mind.