Borderline Personality Disorders: The Concept, the Syndrome, the Patient

What are borderline personality disorders? Where do they originate? How can they be treated? These are the questions to which this volume addresses itself. The possible interface or overlap of borderline personality disorders with schizophrenia has, in recent times, come more and more under scrutiny. Current study has been focusing on clinical, psychological, familial, and genetic descriptions of the syndrome. But such investigations have been hampered by a lack of specific, consensually validated diagnostic criteria and a dearth of collaboration among clinicians and researchers. Seeking to establish a common language, the contributors examine the concept "borderline" as such, and define it in both psychodynamic and phenomenonological terms, while describing the conditions for which the term is used.