The State of Urgency and the Production of Borderline Responses in Daily Life

This article examines how the contemporary state of urgency transforms anxiety from a signal for processing into a pressure for immediate discharge. It argues that the activation of traumatic traces reduces the individual's capacity to remain within the Condition of Suspension (“not knowing yet”), leading to the collapse of the Pause, a fundamental psychic function that enables symbolization and the processing of experience. The loss of the Pause activates the Survival State, strengthens splitting, and undermines ambivalence, integration, and object constancy. As a result, borderline-type organizations of experience emerge as attempts to preserve psychic cohesion. This process extends into the relational field through Projective Identification and the Babel Phenomenon, reproducing dysregulation at interpersonal and social levels. The article concludes that the restoration of the Pause, the capacity to tolerate “not knowing yet,” and the strengthening of ambivalence constitute essential conditions for the recovery of psychic integration.