I do know of three people who were given a diagnosis of Borderline after a life crisis (myself included.) However, there is allot of misinformation amongst therapists concerning borderline, and many of these evaluations are done by people who don’t understand the disorder, but read from the diagnostic manual and jump to conclusions. There’s been allot of discussion about NPD and BPD on the board recently. We really do have to recognize that these disorders crucially involve the conflict between a person’s two “selves”: their real self and their false self- and this is something that begins far, far back in infancy. Are far as I can tell, there isn't an adult onset of a personality disorder with the exception of acquired situational narcissism, which is what happens to the "girl next door" when she becomes a movie star. NPD and BPD both begin before the age of three.
James Masterson wrote that both Narcissistic and Borderline disorders are a collection of defensive behaviors that exploit people as objects. Both disorders “subsume” people into an intrapsychic world within, but Narcissists subsume others while Borderlines allow themselves to be subsumed. In a nutshell, Narcissism is grandiose thinking while Borderline is deficient thinking. Both disorders have their genesis in childhood, between the ages of 18 months and three years. This is a developmental time that Freud called his “pre-oedipal” stage. Everyone goes through this stage as we begin to develop our “selves."
“Pre-Oedipal is concerned with Mom, while “Oedipal” is concerned with Dad. That’s not to say that Dad doesn’t matter during this time- it’s just that we don’t notice him so much since we are concerned with maternal availability. According to babies, Mom’s the one with the power- and the sustenance. We’ve already been with Mom for 9 months before we meet Dad. She’s the one we first cling to for our safety and our food. In short, we really don’t know where she ends and we begin until she leaves us one day. Eventually we realize that there’s another person in the picture (our first triangulation
(read definition)= Dad.)
This pre-oedipal stage was expounded upon in each theorist’s claim of Borderline evolution. For instance, Erik Erickson’s life cycle theory. (Erickson believed that we all go through eight stages of human development where we acquire a sense of ourselves.) A full and healthy ego emerges when all previous 8 stages are integrated properly.
Narcissistic and Borderline Personality disorders are the glitch that occurs in the second stage of the life cycle. This stage is about acquiring a sense of autonomy (your separateness from others) versus shame and doubt about your inability to separate from others. Erikson called it the ability to acquire “free will.”
Acquiring Free will- comes after the success of the first stage where we acquired a sense of trust versus mistrust, which Erickson said gives us hope about people and future expectation that we can trust. If we have erratic and unreliable parenting from birth through 18 months, we are more likely to have an attitude of mistrust and the subsequent ego stages of development will have problems. In short, we might begin to lose hope that people are trustworthy and therefore, fail to exercise our “free will” in the second stage of life.
Acquiring a sense of autonomy versus shame and doubt: learning free will begins at age 18 mos. To 3 years. Child psychologists call this the “terrible twos” while Freud called it the “anal” stage. We are gaining control over our muscles and experimenting with two modes of muscular action: holding on and letting go. It’s also at that time that we are learning to control our bodily functions.
The differences between the two disorders in stage two are as follows:
NARCISSISM:
Your Mother holds you captive in a high chair and feeds you. If she turns her back on you, you throw things because you *can* now. You are learning how to hold and grasp as well as throw. Mother’s response to this tossing of things determines your shame and doubt about you exercising your free will. Does she laugh and retrieve the items so you can throw them again, effectively becoming an extension of your action? If you have any doubts about this, you experiment by throwing again. Does she laugh and retrieve? You now consider Mother a robot under your control. You have now “subsumed” her as an extension of yourself. Since she is an extension of yourself, she has no reason for living other than to be there for you. You can throw things like this all day and she will retrieve them. You also have no problem with letting go of your bodily waste, as Mother is hyper vigilant as your personal servant. You soon learn that the World revolves around you. This behavior is solidified during the oedipal stage if Father also considers Mother an extension of himself. The child then learns to identify with the Father.
The narcissistic infant fails to learn mastery of self control. Instead, he believes that others exist solely for him- he will grow up testing this theory and become enraged when it appears doubtful. Rather than suffer shame, he projects his shame onto others while he thinks of himself as all-good. What appears as an invincible personality to us is actually a very fragile under developed self system of guarded behaviors and insistence on people as subsumed objects to prevent anxiety.
SUMARY: Adult Narcissism is the fear that others do not exist for you. A Narcissist will search out receptive candidates for fending off his fear that he does not exist. He subsumes people then and categorizes them into rewarding objects that serve as repositories of past glory. Attention (good or bad) is what gives a Narcissist his ideas of reference that he is the center of the Universe. Failing adoration, narcissists will take your anger just to get the attention they crave.
THE DIFFERENCES OF BORDERLINE:
If you are Borderline, your Mother holds you captive in a high chair and feeds you. If she turns her back on you, you throw things because you *can* now. You are learning how to hold and grasp as well as throw. Does she retrieve the items and scold you, effectively becoming a reaction of your actions? If you have any doubts about this, you experiment with throwing the item again. Does she yell at you? Maybe smack you? You are now considering the frightening drawback to exercising your free will. Mother is in control of it. Mother’s response to this tossing of things causes shame and doubt about the independent tossing. You cannot throw anything because she says so. You have no free will- it’s held by Mother and she’s determined not to let you have it. This causes anxiety.
In order to deal with this punishment, you’ll have to “subsume” yourself as an extension of her. The thought goes through your baby head that you have no reason to exercise free will until your Mother tells you it’s OK to do so.
It’s at this time that you are also being potty trained. “Besides holding on and letting go of objects, the child also learns to retain feces and urine until an appropriate, parentally approved, time and place is reached to let them go. Depending on the way that the parents handle this pivotal experience, the child learns that holding on and letting go are powerful weapons to be employed against overly demanding parents.” (Erickson 1950 pg. 251)
The crisis in this stage of ego development revolves around a child’s need (a sense of independence) in controlling not only his physical activity, but also his bodily functions. A child that has been excessively shamed for letting go of things and exercising his free will learns instead to be ashamed and to hold on. Instead of learning that the by-products of its body are dirty, he holds on to them and regards his parents as evil instead. (This is the genesis of acting out behaviors in Borderline personality.)
Shamed beyond the limits of the first stage of trust, the child learns to distrust those doing the shaming but “borderlines” on who is to blame, which has a further negative consequence, that of Doubt.
Erickson vividly explicates this sense of doubt as a form of “watching one’s butt.” Everything comes up from behind, as Erickson details, and the behind is unseen yet it can be dominated by the will of others. “The behind is the small beings dark continent, an area of the body which can be magically invaded by those who would attack one’s power of autonomy.” (Erickson 1950 pg.253)
The child counteracts this fear (paranoia, really) of what’s coming up behind them by anticipating it (constant anxiety) and preparing for it (splitting good and bad and suffering the doubt and shame as self directed masochism.) The inevitable masochism becomes a ritualization that splits good/bad into sadist/masochist part selves. It gives the child a sense of authenticity of two part time selves that consist of what “I want to be” and what “I am not allowed to be.” The slavemasters become internalized as the decision makers and the child splits himself and his tutors into two part time selves. These selves will be rewarding part time and withdrawing part time but never integrated.
According to Erickson, vindictive choices of negative roles around which to integrate one’s sense of self represent a desperate attempt to regain control over ones fate. The confusion of good and bad becomes internalized, the letting go and holding on errs on the side of holding on. (The Borderline will cling) and then shame is redirected to the self.
The Borderline thinks: If I hold on to what’s inside me, I will be good. If I let go of what’s inside me, I will be bad. I will wait here until I am told to let go. Unfortunately, I cannot hold on to my bodily waste forever, so I’m really angry that these jail wardens don’t understand this. If I let go without prior approval, I’m just going to be spanked, scolded and (shamed,) so I might as well let go and get the abuse over with, but one of these days, these people are going to say how sorry they are for what they did to me. When they do, we will all live happily ever after (reunion fantasy) I really long for this day, but my doubt that it’s ever going to happen and my shame that I caused it are so great that I must release this anxiety. I just cannot stand the doubt. The doubt eats me alive. I feel by pre-emptively acting out (letting go) and again expecting to be punished for it I will rework this over and over in a repetitious compulsion that solves nothing but permits and allows others to make the determination of free will for me.
The Borderline infant fails to learn mastery of self control. Instead, he believes that he has no free will and exists solely for others- he will grow up testing this theory of his slavery and becoming enraged and depressed when others impose their will or doubtful if others refuse to impose their wills upon him. He believes these two sadistic and masochistic parts exist in everyone and he swings back and forth between the two in pendulous cycles that appear depressive and expressive (mistaken for bi-polar.)
During the pre-oedipal period when he was an extension of his Mother’s will, the Borderline always felt shame- but now that he’s an adult, he has doubts about whether or not he can escape this bondage. His adult life will now become an obsessive search for Mother’s objectified replacement in order to re-live his free will and finally gain freedom from chains. In a sense, Borderline personality disorder is slave mentality and the lame attempts to repeat the earlier conflict in order to escape it.
Hopefully if you’ve read this far, you realize a little bit better of what you are dealing with. If it’s Narcissism, you’re only going to be objectified as an extension of the narcissist and satellite around him as he is the center of the Universe. If it’s Borderline you’re dealing with, you’re only going to be turned into a replication of a very supercritical parent. The one that kept them locked in the high chair- where they remain to this day.
