Analysis and understanding of borderline personality disorder

Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) is a mental illness resulting from a problematic childhood in which an individual experiences a complete lack of control and, in most cases, abuse and/or neglect. Because of its varying symptom clusters, the disorder is often misdiagnosed as Bi-Polar Disorder or Schizophrenia. The DSM definition is "A pervasive pattern of instability of interpersonal relationships, self-image, and affects, and marked impulsivity beginning by early adulthood and present in a variety of contexts, as indicated by five or more of the nine criteria" (American Psychiatric Association, 2013).

The first chapter in Understanding the Borderline Mother is called Make-Believe Mothers. It is an introduction to borderline mothers through the perceptions of their children. The children in this chapter range from being afraid of their mother's anger to being angry themselves. They have experienced strong emotions since childhood of shame, anxiety, guilt or rage (Lawson, 2004). Sadly, most of the time, children of borderlines are doubted if they report their situations to other adults. This leads to isolation and can cause the child, even into adulthood, to invent make-believe worlds in which to escape their terrifying reality with no hope of relief.

Christina Crawford is the daughter of a famous borderline witch — Joan Crawford; Sylvia Plath, herself, had the attributes of a hermit; and Princess Diana may very well have been a waif. Charlotte Du Pont, heiress of the Du Pont powder mill, is another famous borderline. These are only a few examples of well-known people who may have been affected by BPD. Of course, without being able to mentally assess and examine them in a therapy setting, there's no way to be sure.

"The Darkness Within" outlines several general differences between the ideal mother and a mother affected with BPD and lists the nine symptoms thereof. Someone who has at least five of the nine stated criteria can be labeled as having BPD. According to the DSM, the criteria are: 1. frantic efforts to avoid abandonment; 2. pattern of unstable personal relationships; 3. identity disturbances; 4. impulsivity in at least two self-damaging areas; 5. recurrent suicidal behavior; 6. affective instability and intense episodic dysphoria, irritability or anxiety; 7. chronic feelings of emptiness; 8. inappropriate, intense and uncontrollable anger; and 9. stress-related paranoid ideation or severe dissociative symptoms.

This chapter introduces several terms such as the ideal mother versus the borderline mother and the definitions for the waif, hermit, queen and witch mothers and the darkness within each of them. For the waif, her darkness within is helplessness while the hermit's is fear. The queen's darkness within is emptiness and the worst darkness of all to invade a borderline is the witch's annihilating rage.

The waif mother often feels like, and sets herself in the role of, the victim. Think Cinderella. Much like Cinderella, the waif is characterized by her feelings of victimization, helplessness and passiveness. A waif takes less than she needs because she is embarrassed by those needs. The waif parentifies her children rather than parenting them. The parentified children are put in that role because the waif is relentlessly needy, yet denies help when it's offered, creating an infuriating, no-win situation for her children.

One child might pity the waif mother while another child might resent her and the choices she makes. Sometimes, waif mothers can even put their children in peril of being victims themselves by exposing them to dangerous situations, such as being around questionable strangers.

Unlike the waif who fears abandonment the most, the hermit mother is a perfectionist who is paralyzed by her fear of rejection. Lawson relates the idea of a borderline hermit to the fairy tale Snow White. "Like Snow White, the hermit is extraordinarily vigilant because she felt robbed or violated as a child" (Lawson, 2004, p. 81). She is superstitious and her phobias prevent her from being able to relax, socialize or enjoy life. Also, she is so paranoid, she is constantly searching for underlying motives in everyday situations. The hermit mother is possessive and overcontrolling with her children, essentially making them extensions of her collection of owned objects. Hermits are also reclusive and tend to work from home if at all.

Sylvia Plath is an excellent example of a hermit. Plath felt attacked if anyone "violated her" by doing trivial, unintentionally provocative things such as scribbling notes in a borrowed book or moving her furniture. Because the hermit mother overreacts to medical complaints including something as minor as stubbing her toe, her children might overcompensate by underreacting even when they break one of their own. Children are naturally curious and want to explore the world around them but hermit mothers discourage any type of independence because they are fearful it would expose her, not the children, to undue dangers. In this way, the hermit mother, if successful in keeping her children dependent on her, likely will pass on BPD to them.

The queen mother, like the witch, has a merger-hungry personality and needs to be mirrored by her children. Her dominant emotional state is emptiness, and she feels deprived for what she lacks and envious of others whom she perceives have what she wants or needs. She often takes that to the next level by buying and gifting others things she wants or needs herself and then resents when they aren't appreciated. The queen mother seeks attention or prominence and damns everyone who steps in her way.

Like Mary Todd Lincoln, who married a man she knew would elevate her to the White House, queen mothers believe rules do not apply to them. Mary Todd Lincoln illustrated this point by spending a fortune on remodeling the White House during the Civil War. She was more worried about the appearance of her own strength while war was raging right outside. However, despite her bizarre behavior, when her son, Robert, committed her to a mental institution, she responded to his attempts to help her by lashing out. She may as well have been the red queen from Alice in Wonderland screaming, "Off with their heads!" Never try to control the queen.

The witch mother has by far the most terrifying collection of personality traits under the borderline personality disorder umbrella. Witch mothers have been known to go to the extreme of murdering their children, such as in the cases of Susan Smith and Diane Downs, or turn their children into murderers themselves, such as Edmund Kemper. No borderline mother always presents as the witch and some borderline mothers never do.

The defining characteristic behavior of the witch, and clearly recognized by her children, is "the turn." From a child's perspective, the turn happens to the good mother when she suddenly and without warning becomes the witch, usually after periods of closeness. The turn, which can be caused by anything, often having nothing to do with the children, abruptly jerks them from the normality of interacting with the good mother to fearing the witch's wrath. To them, it is so shocking it’s confusing. But, rather than accept there is something wrong with their mother, they bury any notion that the person responsible for their well-being is actually dangerous or unfit. Offspring are most dependent upon their mothers and cannot fend for themselves as children. Sadly, the children of witch mothers have similar PTSD, stress and fear responses to Holocaust survivors and are terrified their whole lives until they can finally break free — if they're lucky.

The "no-good" child is the borderline’s child whom she projects the worst parts of her personality onto whereas the all-good child is parentified and fills the role for the mother left empty by her own parents. The children's mother is very manipulative and she separates people into factions based on whether she has their allegiance and uses the groups to go to war with other groups she deems less loyal.

The "all-good" child is often put in the parenting role for the borderline mother, who contrastingly assumes the role of the child. This is likely due to the fact the mother had an unfulfilling childhood and therefore doesn’t know how to healthily raise her own children. The all-good child is characterized as never developing BPD yet the designation comes with its own set of problems, including being anxious, depressed and guilt-ridden despite being successful professionally. Conversely, the no-good child characteristically does develop BPD and is also known to suffer from pain agnosia or self-injury. Most of the time, the mother is able to enlist her all-good children into helping her antagonize and emotionally torture the no-good children. Serial killer Edmund Kemper's older sister joined their witch mother in bullying him, even to the point of nearly pushing him in front of a train.

"Fairy-Tale Fathers" explores the four male archetypes likely to pair with the four borderline mother archetypes: The frog prince, the huntsman, the king and the fisherman.

The frog prince is the underdog whose waif wife continually hopes will become a prince but who would rather be a frog. The frog prince is emotionally constricted yet his wife hopes he will one day be able to give her what she needs, despite evidence to the contrary. While his wife wishes to see a prince beneath the frog exterior, his children only see the frog.

The huntsman follows the Freudian concept of the superego in his immense desire to remain loyal and uphold his convictions in life, including the devout desire to protect the sanctity of his marriage. While most borderline marriages tend to end in divorce, the huntsman likely won't divorce his hermit wife and instead doubles down on making the marriage work. The huntsman's rigid adherence to rules and behavior, while maintaining outside perception as a good husband and father, actually does more harm than good for his children as he expects them to tolerate abusive behavior from the hermit.

The king and queen have an extremely volatile relationship. While both are obsessed with attention and playing the innocent victim, the queen is " … destructive in order to stir things up and to punish," (Lachkar, 1992) while the king is a prototypical narcissist and tends to withdraw when conflict arises due to his fragile self-esteem. The result of the king's withdrawal, rather than interceding between his wife and children's conflict, leaves their children feeling abandoned. As in the Grimm's fairy tale, The Fisherman and His Wife, the fisherman always relinquishes his will to his witch wife. The reason the fisherman is able and willing to tolerate the witch's toxic abuse is because he didn't have a healthy mother figure as a child, either due to her absence or her similarly relentless abuse. The fisherman is too insecure to stand up to his wife to defend himself, much less his children. The fisherman father commonly joins in with the witch in criticizing, ridiculing, punishing or humiliating their no-good children, however, when the witch turns her attention to him, he removes himself quickly.

Because it's not the borderline's children's job to rescue her, feed her fear, become her subject or become her victim, Lawson suggests a multi-stepped approach for adult children to create a structured relationship with their mothers. Step 1 is to confirm separateness by declaring "I am …" when asserting independence. Step 2 is to create structure by establishing consequences to undesirable behavior by declaring "I will …" and Step 3 is to clarify consequences by declaring "I won't …" especially when it pertains to her threats of suicidal behavior, so as not to validate her irrational behavior.

This book is useful for children of BPD mothers and anyone looking for more information on the disorder. Those who find similarities in their own lives to the characters in the book should not be discouraged and should refrain from self-diagnosis and instead speak directly to a therapist or psychiatrist.

References

American Psychiatric Association. (1994). Diagnostic and statistical manual of

mental disorders, 4th ed. Washington, DC: APA.

Lachkar, J. (1992). The narcissistic/borderline couple: A psychodynamic

perspective on marital treatment. New York: Brunner/Mazel.

Lawson, C. A. (2004). Understanding the borderline mother: Helping her children

transcend the intense, unpredictable, and volatile relationship. Lanham:

Rowman & Littlefield.