Concept
Borderline personality organization
Otto Kernberg's term for a level of personality structure lying between the neurotic and the psychotic. It is marked by identity diffusion, by reliance on primitive defences centred on splitting, and by reality testing that is generally kept but gives way under stress. The term names an underlying structure rather than a set of symptoms, and covers a wide range of severe personality disorders, the borderline disorder among them.
- Introduced by
- Otto F. Kernberg
- Key works
- 3
introduced by
- Otto F. Kernberg 1967 Kernberg set out borderline personality organization in his 1967 paper as a stable structure between neurosis and psychosis, defined by identity diffusion, primitive defences and preserved reality testing, and expanded it in Borderline Conditions and Pathological Narcissism (1975).
gave rise to
- Transference-focused psychotherapy Transference-focused psychotherapy was built as the treatment for borderline personality organization: its aim of integrating split images of self and others follows directly from the structural account of the disorder.
derives from
- Identity diffusion Kernberg built borderline personality organization on Erikson's identity diffusion, which he made the first of its three defining structural features.
- Splitting The concept rests on the Kleinian notion of splitting: Kernberg made the predominance of splitting and related primitive defences the second defining feature of borderline organization.