Psychopathology II: Borderline

Fourth Year Adult Psychoanalytic Training (APT)
2021-22, 3rd Trimester — Fridays, 3:30-5:00pm
Michael Pauly, MD
Charlotte Malkmus, MA LMHC

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May 6, 2022 — Projection, Splitting and Countertransference Enactment

[35 pages]

Kathleen White in Surviving Hatred and Being Hated: Some Personal Thoughts About Racism from a Psychoanalytic Perspective, brings a discussion of the experience of being the object (as a result of one’s race) of toxic attributions and projections. She highlights the subsequent response(s): the self-hatred stemming from the internalization and identification with such projections; and the emergence of the hatred of the other. She stresses that hatred is learned and that the analytic endeavor must include helping patients recover the learning process in hateful experiences so that unlearning and relearning is possible. Please bring in accounts of any experiences (personal or professional) this paper stimulates in you.

Alex Bateman, in Thick-Skinned Organizations and Enactment in Borderline and Narcissistic Disorders, proposes that narcissistic and borderline individuals move between thick and thin- skinned positions, lending an instability to the clinical picture which is both a danger and an opportunity for the treatment. He helpfully uses clinical material to outline his impression of the three countertransference experiences contributing to enactment (complementary, concordant, and defensive) and to highlight three levels of enactment (collusive, defensive, and the un-named role of father, corrective). The last he feels serves as a new helpful developmental experience that moves the treatment forward.

White, K.P. (2002). Surviving hating and being hated: Some personal thoughts about racism from a psychoanalytic perspective.. In Contemporary Psychoanalysis, 38, pp. 401-422

Bateman, A. (1998) Thick-Skinned Organizations and Enactment in Borderline and Narcissistic Disorders. IJP, 79:13-25.