The Siren's Dance - Anthony Walker, MD

[StressedinCleveland]

The Siren's Dance: My Marriage to a Borderline: A Case Study Author: Anonymous Publisher: Self Published, Needs Editing (June 26, 2008) Paperback: 192 pages ISBN-10: 1419698184 ISBN-13: 978-1419698187

About 2% of the general population is estimated to suffer from borderline personality disorder (BPD) as defined by DSM-IV 301.83. If that estimate is in the ballpark there are roughly 4 million adults in the United States affected by BPD. Currently 75% of all diagnosed cases are female and psychiatrists have told me they've never seen a male borderline. While the 75% female ratio is probably somewhat affected by the fact that women seek therapy more commonly than men, available data suggest between 2.5 and 3 million American women suffer from BPD.
 
BPD patients comprise about 10% of individuals seen in outpatient mental health clinics and roughly 30% of psychiatric inpatients, and constitute between 30% and 60% of clinical populations with personality disorders. Though some have claimed successful treatment of this disorder, most regard it as untreatable. While the majority of individuals with BPD attain more stability in their relationships and vocational functioning as they enter their 30s and 40s that is not to say they are cured.
 
The Courtship Dance of the Borderline begins as the author is making his rounds as a medical student at Johannesburg General Hospital, South Africa, in August, 1984, shortly before he graduates. And nowhere have I seen the human side of BPD better portrayed.
 
Jacqueline is a 22-year-old single white female who is in the hospital because she attempted suicide in response to the break-up of a previous relationship. She was known at the time to suffer from BPD and the diagnosis is never in doubt.
 
He picks Jacqueline, who is never described as anything but beautiful, for a case presentation he must give as part of his training. He is planning on, and in fact ends up in a career in psychiatry.
 
She exhibits the wild, uninhibited sexuality that such women often use to attract the attention their disorder requires. He is young and idealistic and believes he can help her. As he later jokes, he is thinking with the wrong head.
 
They elope when he finishes medical school a few months later and move to Windhoek in the Namibian desert to begin his internship. There his destruction of self begins. The loss of one's own points of reference in such relationships is breathtakingly captured.
 
This will be a hauntingly difficult book to read for anyone who has ever lived with someone they loved who suffered from mental illness, or watched as their beloved went mad. But such readers will probably find it as cathartic for them to read as it was for the author to write.
 
Characteristics of BPD include inappropriate, intense, often uncontrollable anger, a proclivity for intense relationships, and fear of abandonment. Jacqueline exhibits all of these. Individuals with BPD also show frequent displays of temper and are involved in recurrent physical fights that they almost always initiate. When Jacqueline was angry she threw things, punched her husband, bit him (one time to the point he required stitches and a tetanus booster), scratched, and kicked him. He would dodge, block, run, and sometimes attempt to restrain her. On such occasions she would scream bloody murder and tell others he was attacking her.
 
Because all of her previous boyfriends (she became sexually active at 13) had ended up hitting her, she makes him promise never to hit her. But, as the marriage continues while he faces the incredible demands of a medical internship, one evening he comes home exhausted after having been up for more than twenty-four hours and goes to bed. Jacqueline attacks him in his sleep with scissors and he slaps her, shocking them both. Of course, today in America he would be immediately arrested for domestic violence for such an act and her behavior would be excused as "self defense."
 
By the time Jacqueline nearly puts out his eye with some keys on a ring toward the end of his internship he has decided the relationship must end or her behavior must change.
 
If this sounds familiar to many of you, it is. Currently the Equal Justice Foundation receives at least one request for help a week from a man in a relationship where the most likely diagnosis is that the woman suffers from borderline personality disorder. Sadly, under current laws, the only advice we can offer is to get as far away from the woman as he physically can, as quickly as he can, and stay away. We also suggest he review Erin Pizzey's description of an emotional terrorist, where she makes the same recommendation.
 
Infidelity, or the threat of infidelity as used by Jacqueline, are common in such relationships and we continually encounter cases where the woman has filed charges of domestic violence against her partner to cover up her sexual transgressions.
 
In the courtship dance, Dr. Walker is able to escape from Jacqueline by taking a residency in Boston and leaving South Africa, where he goes on to become a psychiatrist as he originally planned.
 
After leaving Jacqueline he exhibits the virtually universal symptoms of post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) found in such cases, e.g., p. 126 "... .I jumped and startled when the phone rang or a car backfired," as though he were shell shocked.
 
But most men we hear from haven't such options. And because the male is always blamed for the violence, most of them have been arrested and imprisoned for crimes their partners committed. And sometimes these men have lost control when attacked, as did Dr. Walker, and struck back. The most common report, though, is that they were simply trying to defend themselves, or restrain her.
 
The situation is most tragic when the couple have little children because the borderline personality will lash out at anyone around them when they are angry. So oftentimes we hear from men who were trying to protect their children from a mother who has gone mad. Yet when the police were called, he was arrested and jailed. And because of the DV charges (you're male, you're guilty) she will be given custody of the children and he will only be able to see them during supervised visitation (for which he pays) for several years, if ever as family courts in such cases frequently deny all contact with their father. In the meantime, the children are the only ones left for the mother to vent the anger inherent in her disorder upon. But, one can rest assured, any signs of abuse of the children will be blamed on the father or her new boyfriend.
 
Dutton, 1995, p. 140-155, and Gelles, 1997, p. 80, among others have found that borderline personality disorder (BPD) is strongly associated with male battering of women. Despite the fact that BPD is predominantly a female disorder, I am not aware of any research linking BPD with women battering men, though we certainly have plenty of stories of such. But advocacy research, political correctness, and feminist ideology don't admit of the fact that women assault men as frequently as the reverse. With 2.5 to 3 million American women suffering from BPD we certainly have sufficient numbers of women to more than account for all the reported abuse, however.
 
While America has largely reverted to the barbarous practice of warehousing the mentally ill in jails, where family violence is involved we ofttimes now imprison the sane one if he is male. And we do that without benefit of any semblance of due process or civil rights.
 
We cannot long continue these practices and survive as a free nation.

[billybragg123]

For those of us with a BPD person in their lives it will be a hard book to put down. Siren’s Dance is the first narrative book that I’ve read that is written by a NonBP about his experiences.
 
The story is a simple one. Boy meets and falls in love with a "crazy" girl. Boy and girl have several rather explicit sexual encounters (this book is NOT for children and could form the basis for an R movie which is apparently in the works!--stay tuned). Boy’s friends and professional colleagues warn him of the ultimate ’bad end’ that is the only realistic outcome of such a relationship, which Boy of course, ignores. Boy thinks love will ’fix’ it. Boy’s parents wish he could think clearly, which clearly he cannot as who can when you are so much in infatuation or "love"?
 
It is typical in that the NonBP even with all his training, (he’s a doctor, training to be a psychiatrist), even with all the emotional distance he has now, even with more than a decade behind him, the author is still minimizing, rationalizing and defending this, the love of his life. Who among us has not been there?
 
It’s typical in that the Non is presented as someone with a savior complex, always wanting to help the weakest and most injured things. It’s typical in that the borderline had the Non wrapped around her finger almost instantly (although it doesn’t go deeply into the reflection of the NonBP’s personality that so often occurs in these situations.) Sex clearly played a large part in this story, as it does for many of these kinds of relationships. However, it is just as common for sex to be extremely bad or extremely infrequent as it is to be exciting as in this relationship. He states, "It was dangerously exhilarating, like a joyride on a roller coaster in the dark after the park had closed for the day."
 
The story was typical, in that it was a whirlwind relationship. They went from meeting to engaged in three months, married in six, despite him planning to have a one year engagement. "Manipulation" played a large role in how fast things went, although he is most willing in the story.
 
Perhaps the most typical part of his experience was the wedge that she purposefully drove between him and his family and friends. The take home message seems to be that you can’t love someone with this disorder enough and still have a good relationship with your family or your friends. This is probably about as universal as splitting and raging amongst those with the disorder.
 
The author’s wife, who has the disorder did not deal well with being separated from her support system, and manipulated herself back into her comfort zone with amazing speed. She displays lots of object constancy issues if you are looking for them. She creates a number of classic (and brilliant) double bind, no win situations. She uses emotional blackmail with amazing results. Eventually tho he gets some emotional distance and begins to reclaim his life.
 
The author is courageous in admitting that he lost it on several occasions, vandalizing her property and at one point actually slapping her in the face (in self defense). He admits to having acquired some fleas, although probably not as many as a longer experience would have brought out.
 
The author clearly expresses the feeling that he ran out of emotional gas. This is one of the most instructive parts of the book. As he created emotional distance, his BPSO’s behaviors decreased. This is the point where typically the BP would instinctively "feel" something was amiss and begin the re-engaging process.
 
Observations
 
This book does show the importance of how essential strong boundaries are, and it demonstrates the process and results of emotional distance. His coming out of the fog and recovery from his experience after the separation are an important part of the book. His initial recovery was relatively quick, although there are clearly lingering effects to this day. His unbounded hopefulness, his minimization, his rationalization, and being smitten with this creature all still haunt the author.
 
Two Questions:
 
He never said whether he found love again. I hope that he did. It seems a strange thing to leave out if he did have a successful relationship after this experience, but maybe he just got married to his work. It’s hard to say from the book alone.
 
Perhaps the biggest unanswered question is what would have happened had he gotten his stated with to have had a child with this woman. Certainly the parting could not have been so clean. Certainly there would have been more effective and sustained re-engaging. Thank heavens for all involved that this particular borderline had the rare insite to realize that that she would not have been a good mother!
 
This story has no clear hero, and no clear villan. Both parties made mistakes. In this respect, at least, it is the story of all of us.

[Dolphin]

All names have been changed for privacy.
 
Briefly, a medical student (planning to become a psychiatrist) meets a young woman who has just been hospitalized for a suicide attempt after her last boyfriend left her.  He is struck by her beauty, gets to know her in order to present her case at a case conference (and completely botches the job), she initiates a relationship through her mother, draws him in, they get married within a few months (a year earlier than planned), she follows him to his internship, doesn't last, they move back to near her parents and he resumes a different internship, but the demands of his work continue to be a point of conflict because she wants him entirely to herself, ideally that he would have no outside relationships, no other demands on his time.  He gets out of the relationship after the end of his internship, although he actually gives her options, so in a way, it's she that chooses out.  It takes him another two years to get himself more or less back together.
 
Interestingly, his practice now includes a high proportion of borderlines, and he believes that he has become a better therapist because of his early experience.
 
I thought the book shone with compassion, overall.  Yes, some of it was not pretty, but I appreciated the insight on why someone might get into a relationship like this, and why they might stay, or if they didn't, what it would take to leave.  It was amazing how much of himself the relationship sucked out of the author.  And yet, he was perceptive enough to analyze the situation and find a graceful way out of it.  It is noteworthy that the relationship ends with a whimper rather than a bang.

[o2bz14u]

The protagonist is a psychiatrist, who as a medical student, married a patient who was confined for attempting suicide. The book is not a one of a  "self help" nature, but memoirs of his short tempestuous marriage to a woman diagnosed with BPD. The story is true. It is haunting. It is nonjudgemental.
<br/>:)r Walker's book reads like a diary he wrote for himself. He does not paint himself a victim nor a savior. His own personality does not really shine through in this journaling.

The memoir causes the reader to pause for introspection (at least I did) as they follow the saga. The book is an easy read. Not very many pages in fact, and more of a 'blog' style of writing. I got this at the library and  since it is not a reference or self help book I would not invest too much money in it as once it has been read you will not ever need to go back to it. Read it for free.