A psychoanalytic, clinical approach for a non-neurotic patient. Case F

Abstract

This article investigates clinical work on a patient with borderline personality organization. Contemporary psychoanalysis has developed valuable theories to understand patients such as this one. Analysts agree that serious pathologies originate in severe disturbances in early development and in the dyadic relationship with the mother. An analytical understanding is useful when considered non neurotic patients (transference and counter transference, acting out, lability of the self, pathological defense, etc). I propose a mixed intrapsychic-intersubjective approach to explore the psyche of a patient diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder, as well as to account for disturbances in their object relationships. Examples have been drawn from key moments over the past three years of therapy. The case of F is addressed from the theories on the borderline personality organization, as they appear in the works of the Austrian psychoanalyst Otto Kernberg, in the theory of thinking of Wilfred Bion and in the contributions of non-neurotic patients in the work of André Green. These theoretical contributions include both the constitutional perspective (the death drive and the innate aggression of the patient) and the environmental factor (the object relations)