The borderline personality organization in Otto F. Kernberg’s psychodynamic perspective

Abstract

ABSTRACT In this article, we examine the concept of borderline personality organization as it was conceptualized by Otto F. Kernberg. We highlight the diagnostic criteria so that it is possible to recognize a borderline organization, namely primitive defensive mechanisms associated with an examination of reality generally uncompromised. We point out that, for Kernberg, dysfunctional management of the primitive feelings of anger would prevent the psychic integration, in early childhood of the borderline subject, of the ‘good’ and ‘bad’ dyads in which Self and object are related. The patient, growing up, would then discover herself as dominated by tearing and opposing experiential and affective ‘states’. Kernberg describes borderline personality organization as a pathological condition of internalized object relations.