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10 - Nobody? Disturbed Self-Experience in Borderline Personality Disorder and Four Kinds of Instabilities

from Part III - Borderline Personality and Eating Disorders

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 October 2020

By
Philipp Schmidt
Edited by
Christian Tewes  and
Giovanni Stanghellini
Christian Tewes
Affiliation:
Heidelberg University Hospital
Giovanni Stanghellini
Affiliation:
Chieti University
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Summary

This paper addresses the phenomenology of self-experience in borderline personality disorder (BPD) and the role of the body therein. First, I describe how the three kinds of instability associated with BPD, instability in identity, affect, and interpersonal relationships present aspects of disturbed self-experience. Guided by the approach of phenomenological psychopathology, I emphasize that these aspects of disturbed self-experience are experientially interconnected and interwoven. Second, I discuss how the experience of the body features in these aspects of disturbed self-experience and suggest that BPD also involves a fourth kind of instability: a significant instability in embodiment. Third, I argue that analyzing the experiential interconnections between BPD-related phenomena and the bodily dimension of disturbed self-experience not only helps in describing and understanding BPD experience but also allows significant insights into how the clinical picture of BPD emerges and persists over time. Finally, these insights, I suggest, also lend support to a holistic understanding of BPD: the pattern of instability in BPD, rather than being a cluster of atomistic symptoms, is a Gestalt-like complex of intertwined experiential structures.

Type
Chapter
Information
Time and Body
Phenomenological and Psychopathological Approaches
 , pp. 206 - 229
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

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