Towards the Genealogy of Borderline Personality Disorder

Abstract

Background: The diagnosis of borderline personality disorder arises from the absence of a category to classify people whose diagnosis did not correspond to either neurosis or psychosis and has, since its emergence, suffered changes in its definition and clinical application.

Aims: Outline the genealogy of borderline personality disorder in order to formulate an hypothesis regarding the emergence of this category of diagnosis.

Methods: On the basis of a review of the literature, a critical reading of the evolution of borderline category was done.

Results: The concept’s evolution can be defined in three phases: from the end of 19th century to the beginning of 20th century several terminologies were used and the diagnosis was heterogeneous; from 1960 to 1989 the concept of borderline personality organization emerged as well as its systematization according to psychoanalytic theory; from 1980 to the present day it appeared in DSM III and the homogenization of the diagnosis under biopsychiatry occurred. The limits between the different phases are fluid and dependent of socio-politic conditions. Several reasons are given to explain the emergence of this nosological entity: creation of new psychic subjects, better access to mental health and disease identification, biopolitic governmentality, identification of previously non-pathologic behaviour, social discontinuity, expression of new suffering and social contagion.

Conclusion: Borderline personality disorder results from practices, representations, social interactions and modes of subjectification, in which there is a new relationship between the ideas of the body and identity.