The Psychotherapy of Core Borderline Psychopathology

A psychodynamic formulation of borderline psychopathology includes the understanding of the borderline patient's aloneness problems, need-fear dilemma issues, and difficulties with primitive guilt. The aloneness problems are at the core of the disorder, and involve an inability to maintain an evocative memory, and holding and soothing introjects of significant people when under stress of separation. The possible childhood origins of these difficulties are explored and related to the ways these issues emerge in psychotherapy. The psychodynamic formulation is crucial in the psychotherapeutic approach to the aloneness problems. It helps the therapist work with the aloneness difficulties and understand the options as the therapy continues. Since rapid therapeutic decisions are often necessary with borderline patients, the formulation provides the necessary framework, and helps the therapist process and utilize countertransference feelings. Projective identification is an important concept that helps explain the complex transference/countertransference experiences, and is used in defining the resolution of the aloneness problems of borderline patients. Finally, limit-setting and the use of transitional objects are explored, utilizing the psychodynamic framework that has been defined.