Home > Encyclopedia of Psychology > Borderline Personality

Mental illness characterized by erratic and impulsive self-destructive behavior and an intense fear of abandonment.

Characteristics

Borderline individuals have a history of unstable interpersonal relationships. They have difficulty seeing the "shades of gray" in the world, and view significant people in their lives as either completely flawless or extremely unfair and uncaring (a phenomena known as splitting). These alternating feelings of idealization and devaluation are the hallmark feature of borderline personality disorder. Because borderline patients set up such excessive and unrealistic expectations for others, they are bound to be disappointed when their expectations aren't realized.

The term "borderline" was originally coined by psychologist Adolf Stern in the 1930s to describe patients who bordered somewhere between