Borderline personality disorder and lived time

Abstract

Objectives. – Starting from the semiological heterogeneousness of borderline patients, we try to understand the everyday life of such subjects, and to determine the psychopathological structure of Borderline Personality Disorder. Method. – This article’s principal focus is lived time. We explore diverse meanings of the notions of immediacy and instantaneity, considered as key components of borderline patients’ lived time. We also consider other existential concepts from phenomenological psychopathology, such as space, emotion, identity, and the body. Results. – The fragmented self hypothesis (Fuchs, 2007) clarifies the way in which borderline patients relate to the main psychic functions, and reveals a being-in-the-world in excess of the spatio-temporal situation. In addition, Kimura’s notion of the intra festum (1992), closely correlated to the notions of instantaneity and immediacy, is put into a fruitful dialogue with the notions of the fragmented self and of the exceeding of the spatio-temporal situation. Discussion. – The growing prevalence of BPD, along with the quality of the experiences narrated by borderline patients, allow us to suggest a link between a borderline being-in-the-world and our society’s incessant technological advances, which contain the possibility of modifying the coordinates of space and time. Conclusion. – The different concepts explored in this article ultimately appear to link back up with the notions of instantaneity and immediacy. These two terms, closely related but calling upon different points of view, are closely connected with a certain hyporeflexivity, whose expression differs according to whether one situates it in the “normal” or the in the pathological. Hypo-reflexivity appears in the context of a social world characterized by the constant need for hyperflexibility (which notion brings us back to immediacy and instantaneity). Thus, the borderline experience overlaps with our postmodern lifestyle, which in turn reveals the potentially adaptive dimensions of this personality disorder.

Peer reviewed