 Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to this edition of the Jolly Heretic. I have a very special guest for you today, a returning guest at the Jolly Heretic Public House. That is Professor Sam Vaknin, and we are going to talk about borderline personality disorder, which is a fascinating thing. Sam, hello. Yes, hello. Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure to see you again. Now, last time you were on here, we talked about narcissism, but this time I want to focus on this. So, first of all, how would you sort of define borderline personality disorder? What exactly is it? Well, I think rather than defining it perhaps, let me focus on six features of borderline personality disorder. The first is what I call introject inconstancy, the inability to create an internal representation of an external object of a person. So, the borderline is unable to form an internal object, a representation, an avatar, a snapshot, if you wish, of people in her life, especially significant or meaningful people in her life, and this is introject inconstancy. The second thing is that the borderline has more or less like the narcissist, has problems with her self-perception. The narcissist has something known as bad object. The narcissist has a constellation of voices inside himself or herself that inform the narcissist that he is unworthy, that he is bad, that he is ugly or stupid or whatever. Voices that put the narcissist down. The borderline, on the other hand, has the opposite kind of object. She has what one could call a good object. It's an object that self-aggrandizes. It's an object that internal object, a set of voices, a set of introjets, that inform the borderline that she is actually perfection-rify, that she is, you know, and it's kind of internalized grandiosity. On the other hand, the borderline is prone to misconduct, bad behavior, and this creates a dissonance. The borderline has a self-perception as a good person, but cannot deny the fact that she misbehaves very often. And so this creates a dissonance, and this dissonance is resolved typically via victimhood. The borderline tends to claim to have been a victim of circumstances, of people, and so on and so forth. The next very important feature of borderline personality disorder is what is known as the twin anxieties. Borderlines are anxious about being abandoned. Abandonment anxiety, the clinical term is separation in security, is a dominant feature of borderline personality disorder. Borderlines are terrified. They anticipate abandonment. They imagine abandonment. They dwell on abandonment and so on. How is this consistent with having a, you indicate that they have almost a positive sense of who they are, like a narcissism? Their behaviors, their behaviors are bad. They do realize that they are misbehaving and they understand. I mean, they are rational beings after all. They understand that they are pushing the partner away, ultimately. So they're terrified of abandonment. On the one hand, on the other hand, they have what is known as engulfment anxiety. It is a fear of being assimilated and consumed by the intimate partner, the special friend, etc., etc. So this creates what is known as approach avoidance repetition compulsion. The borderline approaches you and idealizes you and fears that you might or should abandon her. If you come to know her better, if you come to witness her misbehavior, you may abandon her. So she's terrified about this. But then when you respond, when you prefer, when you provide love and caring and compassion and empathy, the borderline panics. She develops engulfment anxiety and she runs away. Approach, avoidance, repetition, compulsion. There's a Freudian term, by the way. One of the most important features of, if not the most important features of borderline personality disorder is known as dysregulation. Now there's emotional dysregulation. There's also mood liability. In other words, the inability to somehow control, stabilize emotions and moods. The tendency to be overwhelmed by emotions. Drown in emotions. The tendency to act with the ability to ups and downs, cycles, to stimuli, to environmental stimuli and so on and so forth. So this is why the borderline is looking for someone who would regulate her, who would offer what is known as external regulation. She can't regulate, she can't control, she can't discipline herself, she can't stabilize herself emotionally and mood-wise. So she's looking for an intimate partner or a special friend who would do these for her. She outsources her regulation. She says, you are my rock. You provide me with a sense of safety and stability. When I'm with you, my moods are stable. When I'm with you, my emotions don't overwhelm me, don't drown me, don't dysregulate me. So she expects the intimate partner or the friend to offer this external regulation because she can't do it from the inside. Another feature of borderline personality disorder is known as switching. The transition from one self-state to another self-state. For example, from a borderline self-state to a psychopathic self-state. Where the borderline essentially loses one identity and acquires another. And this is known as identity disturbance. Now I'm using the word identity judiciously and so do other scholars because the whole identity, the whole entire identity changes. It's not just a few superficial things. I mean, everything changes. Can I hold you? Can I do you mind? Can I ask you about a couple of things before we move on? So first of all, why is it that she cannot? And it is normally a female. We'll come to that in a minute. But it's traditionally understood to be more female than male. I want to look at the male aspect of it. But why can't she not stabilize herself? Other people can. What is the problem with the borderline? What's the thing that underpins them? We don't know. We don't know. We do know that there is hereditary component. There is some genetic vulnerability because we know, for example, that if you have a first degree relative who has been diagnosed with borderline personality disorder, your chance of being diagnosed is five times higher. So this is strongly indicative of some hereditary component. We also know there are brain abnormalities in borderline personality disorder. It's the same with psychopathy, by the way, also brain abnormalities. So it seems to be a confluence of some kind of genetic predisposition coupled with some brain structural or functional problems, issues. But all this template is triggered in what is known as adverse childhood experiences in dysfunctional families or exposure to bed parenting or peer rejection. So when you're exposed to adversity and you have this genetic propensity and problems with your brain functioning in structure, then you might end up being someone with borderline personality. Why does that adversity induce it? Well, adversity generally induces personality disorders. There is close linkage between childhood adversity and adverse experiences, and, for example, narcissism, borderline personality disorders, to some extent schizoid and paranoid personality disorders and so on and so forth. It seems that the best explanation I came across, and there are quite a few, but the best one I've come across, is that there is a disruption in the formation of the self. There's a disruption in the constellation and integration of everything into a coherent, cohesive, functional sense of self, actual self, what Freud called at the time, ego. I mean, never mind what's the language we choose to use. But this core identity, this feeling that you are, this becoming into you as an idiosyncratic being, this seems to be disrupted by childhood adversity. And so you end up having what is known as an empty schizoid core, emptiness where you should have been, absence masquerading as presence, you know? And so this absence, this emptiness can provide regulation. There's no one there to regulate you. And rather than internal regulation, you resort to a variety of solutions to regulate externally. So you become dependent on an intimate partner, a special friend, or you introduce drama into your life, or you self-harm. Self-harming has a regulatory function. How so? When you self-harm, for example, you feel alive. When you self-harm, when you cut, when you mutilate, when you self-trash sexually, I mean, there's a variety of ways to self-harm. When you're being reckless, when you're being self-destructive and so on. All these are forms of self-harming. When you self-harm, you feel alive. And you are able to drown the dysregulated emotions. There's so much drama outside. There's so much risk, so much danger. So much is happening. The outside noise drowns the inside noise. So this is a form of regulation. So it allows you to not focus on the emptiness. We all do this. What is the entertainment industry? What is this escapeeism? It's very interesting because there was an analysis of love poetry which found that about 80% of love poets have insecure attachment styles. Which is consistent with the borderline's focus on romantic love and this sort of thing. So the other thing I was going to ask before you go back to your big sticks is the nature of the self. So we all have an alter subtly how we present ourselves in accordance to who we're with. So you and I are both academics and whatever and so I'm quite comfortable that this is me. But I can see that if I was with somebody else who was a bit different I might slightly change how I was presenting myself and be a little bit different. What do you say that in normal people there's a variety of social masks that we wear but with people that have BPD they just dramatically jump between masks? What does it mean to have a labial sense of self? I would say that using the metaphors that you've used which by the way are common metaphors in psychology. We have the concept of persona, persona which is a Jungian concept. We have the concept of the mask which is Irving Govman's concept. Irving Govman was a sociology. So we have this concept of mask or persona in psychology and sociology. And yes we all wear masks or personas which allow us to function in a variety of social settings and in accordance with various demands and expectations as to functioning in the workplace, in church and so on and so forth. But there is something underlying all these masks. There is some common denominator. There's some coherent thread that holds them together. As in borderline personality disorder they are only the masks. The masks have taken over. In a healthy whatever that means but in a normal person statistically speaking. In a normal person there is an agency, a core which controls the masks, which kind of trots out the masks. So there is a kind of production director or casting director, which is okay now you should use mask number seven. And this is known as the self states or the ego states or the sub personalities theory, first suggested by Philip Bromberg in the 80s. So he said that we have this casting agent or producer that just chooses, makes choices as to which self states would be most appropriate in a variety of settings. The borderline doesn't have this casting director. It's as if the casting director or the producer has gone AWOL and all that's left are the masks and they acquire a life of their own and they take over. It's a very horrible kind of thing. And then they have a mind of their own, the masks and this is essentially switching. Right, so that's one thing you were moving on to which was the idealization splitting notion. So why do they, if you were young chap and you were going out with a girl and you wanted a sign that she was borderline, I'm going to say one of the sides, assuming she hasn't got a big cut on her wrist, is that she idealizes you. She thinks you're, you can't think about anything else but you. She finds you amazing. Her whole day is spent, she thinks about you when she's crossing the road, she thinks about you when she's cooking in every spare moment. Now why do they do that? Why do they idealize? They're not the only ones to do that, of course. Nazis do that. Idealization fulfills different roles, different functions in narcissism and in borderline. In narcissism idealization is required so that the narcissist can then proceed to the shared fantasy, to construct a shared fantasy, within which the partner is essentially a maternal figure. While the borderline needs to idealize, because she's about to hand over control of her mind to someone. It's terrifying, it's a terrifying proposition. The intimate partner of the borderline, the special friend of the borderline, is about to take over her internal world, is about to become the main regulator of her emotions in charge of her moods. And to a large extent her reality testing, her interface with reality, it's a state of, it's the equivalent of being a hostage, Stockholm syndrome kind of way. But so this is a terrifying decision to make. And you want to be sure that you're making it with the right person. You want to be sure that you will not be taken advantage of, that you will not fall prey to a predator and so on. So you need to idealize. But couldn't it be also that you say that they experience these emotions very strongly and they experience, my understanding, they experience negative emotions very strongly, a sense of emptiness. Impositive, not positive. So you said that they experience positive emotions very strongly, that they matter and they're important. They're both negative and positive, very strongly. Right, okay. So when they're experiencing these negative emotions very strongly is that they're worthless and whatever. Then presumably one way you can cope with that is itself by creating a fantasy. Because isn't it that you get borderline people that they will let's say their fantasy object will be a celebrity, will be a man they haven't even met. So there's no question, there's no hope. Well, maybe there's a tiny bit of hope. There's no realistic hope that that person is going to be their real life friend that's going to regulate their emotions for them. So couldn't it be that the fantasizing about somebody who's perfect and wonderful is going to make their life great. Is this living in a fantasy? That is a way of coping with the negative feelings. Fantasy is a critical feature of narcissism and borderline. But these are different types of fantasies. It is a narcissist who believes himself unconsciously to be bad, unworthy, inadequate, and needs to compensate for this by pretending to be Godlike. So, and he can do this only in a fantastic space, obviously. Okay, a bit of a problem, I don't know if it's a problem with my internet or his internet. Hello, are you back? Reality intervened. Fantastic space. You can do this only in a fantastic space. Yes, so he needs to resort to fantasy because reality would push back. Reality wouldn't allow him to maintain his self-delusion as Godlike. This is the narcissist. The borderline is exactly the opposite. The borderline believes herself to be a good object. She believes herself to be perfection reified. But she realizes that she is not in control of her emotions and moods. And this makes her act out. It makes her misbehave. This lack of regulation makes her misbehave, causes her to misbehave. So she wants to get rid of this feature. It's a bug. As far as she's concerned, it's a bug, not a feature. And she wants to get rid of it, debug herself. And this she can do only through the agency of someone who is Godlike. Someone who is ideal. Someone who she could feel is a secure base. Someone she could hand over, control over herself too. But nobody is that. So she is simply focusing on all the good sides of this person and ignoring the bad sides. Or totally inventing things. But that's itself a fantasy. That's my point. So what is it that causes her then? So my understanding is that in these relationships, she will have this fantasy object. And then as the relationship progresses between the whatever kind of man ends up in the relationship with the borderline woman, we can look at that in a minute. And her, then you have the de-idealization. So why does that process take place? Because of engulfment anxiety. When the partner reacts favorably to his new role as the Godlike regulator over emotions and moods, the guru, the teacher, the father figure, I don't know what, when he reacts favorably to that, he begins to be loving and caring, to display empathy and compassion and concern and so on and so forth. The borderline feels suffocated. She feels as though she is being held hostage. She feels imprisoned, shackled and incarcerated. She needs to run away. She needs to consume. She feels subsumed in him. She reacts very badly to what is known as the symbiotic state or merger and fusion. And then she begins to devalue the intimate partner or the special friend. And she transforms the intimate partner into a persecutory object, into an enemy basically, an internalized enemy. And she says he's very controlling. He doesn't let me live my life. He is all over me. He doesn't let me have a minute of my own. I don't have my private time, private space. I need to get away. And she runs away. And she runs away hatefully. She becomes, as I said, hateful, rejecting, abusive and so on and so forth, just to ascertain that there will be no reenactment of the engulfment phase, to get rid of him permanently. But then she regrets it because she has abandonment anxiety. She brought on her abandonment. It's pre-emptive abandonment. She created the very abandonment that she's terrified of. So then she hoovers. She goes back to the same intimate partner that she has just reviled. And she says, you're actually the best. You're wonderful. And she re-idealizes him. And this is an endless cycle. She can do this like 200 times. I was thinking, if you idealize a person and you basically farm out your emotional regulation to that person, then it's almost, how can I put it? A narcissistic kind of idea, not a narcissist. That's not the wrong word. Almost a solipsistic idea. But that person understands you. And therefore if that person upsets you, that's his fault because he must have known. And therefore you go mad at him. It's all his fault. That's one aspect of it. Whenever, of course, the intimate partner deviates or diverges from the idealized image, then of course this creates frustration and aggression. So the intimate partner should never deviate or diverge or contradict the idealized image of him in the borderline's mind. And if he ever does, it's cause for aggression. But that doesn't lead the borderline to abandon the intimate partner. The borderline actually abandons the intimate partner when he does conform to the idealized image. There's no winning with the borderline. If you conform with the idealized image, then she experiences engulfment anxiety and meshment anxiety and she runs away. If you don't conform with the idealized image and you're the enemy and she devalues you and she sticks around but she begins to misbehave, act out, drama, betrayal and so on and so forth. So there's no winning strategy with the borderline. No. No, okay. So, that's a very interesting point. So what you would expect then in a, is that a relationship between, well, I'll go into it in a minute, but if there was a relationship between two borderlines, let's say, which I hypothesized based on genetic similarity and the 50% heritability of this would happen, then you're gonna get these cycles. It will go through cycles of being together, breaking up, being together, breaking up, being together like that and they will be very, very intense. Now, actually borderlines do not team up. Theoretical assumptions aside, they don't team up because another borderline cannot provide regulations. They are dysregulated. The borderline seeks external regulation. She needs someone stable, someone safe, someone predictable, someone present and another borderline cannot provide any of these. The other borderline is equally dysregulated, equally crazy making, equally absent, equally present. They'd be attracted to each other though. No, they wouldn't be, actually. Well, they'd have to be. Okay, what about a narcissist, a narcissist? Yes, the borderline would be very attractive to a narcissist because the narcissist is against it. Let's talk about that. So in general, I mean, the borderline is more, well, I don't know, I know you've argued against this to some extent, but the borderline is more likely to be female. The narcissist is more likely to be male. No, I'm not arguing against it. It's just the statistics about half of all narcissists are female and half of all borderlines are male. Now it is true that originally borderline personality disorder was a female thing. There was a kind of gender bias built into the diagnosis and it was a female thing. And until the 1980s, about 75% of people diagnosed with borderline personality disorder were women. But that has changed nowadays. I think one of the reasons it may have changed is the dissolution of gender roles. We live in a world which is essentially unigender where we have only males, only females, if you wish. There's no clear distinction between genders. So I think all these gender-based diagnoses are kind of falling apart. That applies to narcissism. 75% of people diagnosed with narcissistic personality disorder were men until the 1980s. And today it's 50-50 because women are becoming much more masculine, much more masculine. Their self-definition and self-image is totally masculine. So of course they're becoming much more narcissistic. Okay, but my model that I think tends to work with genetic similarity, would certainly I would think that there would be genetic-specific crossover between narcissism and BPD. Yes, they are attracted to each other too. Why are they attracted to each other? Why is the narcissist attracted to BPD and vice versa? Start with the BPD. The narcissist projects an image of supreme self-confidence. Extreme stability and predictability. Self-conviction. Immutable values and so on and so forth. The narcissist is a rock, pretends to be a rock actually. Underneath, it's a nobody, it's an emptiness. But okay, the narcissist gives a very convincing rendition of a very stable, sage person. You know, person who can be relied upon, whose behavior is totally predictable and so on. So this is exactly what the borderline is looking for. This overconfidence of narcissists is very alluring to the borderline. She falls for it. She believes that she has found the ultimate external regulator. And so she falls for narcissists. Narcissists on the other hand, regard borderlines as an ideal partner in the shared fantasy because borderlines are prone to fantasy as well. So there's a collusion here. There's a collaboration in the formation of a fantasy which would be gratifying to the narcissist and to the borderline. The borderline idolizes the narcissist. The borderline does treat the narcissist as godlike, idealizes him and so on. That's exactly what he needs. He needs this source of narcissistic supply. And she does this within a fantasy which upholds and buttresses the narcissist's grandiosity. So she's perfect. She's a perfect mate. And he's a perfect mate because he's strong. He's resilient. He's powerful. He's amazing. He's everything. And he can be trusted to regulate the borderline's internal world. So she believes. And so they are a match made in hell or heaven. But what about the idea, let's say there was an age gap. So let's say there was a large age gap and you had two people with BPD. Then presumably if the man was older, you'd have the genetic similarity because they both got BPD. You'd have the bonding over experiencing similar things that his BPD would be less bad and more regulated maybe. And he would seem more narcissistic in that sense he'd be more like a narcissist. Borderline women tend to be attracted to older men in principle because they perceive them as father figures and so on. Beyond the age of 45, it's very rare to diagnose someone with borderline personality disorder. That's what I mean. So the person could have had borderline personality when he was younger. So then he'll completely understand the much younger female. And so there'll be a strong bonding that way and there'll be the genetic similarity. Yes, because by the age of 45 or 50 there's no longer a borderline. About 81% of people with borderline personality disorder diagnoses can no longer be diagnosed after age 45. Spontaneous remission, which is another reason to believe that it's genetic or brain thing because it doesn't psychological. That's fascinating. So that would make sense for a number of things I've observed. So you might have a chap who's got borderline, used to be borderline, has borderline traits. He'll be very, very genetic, similar to this woman, but basically he'll come across a stable and perhaps he'll start... He'll not only come across a stable, he's likely to be stable and regulated and so on. Well, we might have some things that aren't not regulated, but I see what you mean. A male that has borderline personality and a female in terms of how they present. The narcissism. Male borderlines are likely to emphasise grandiosity, power, anti-social behaviour, and they are likely to be much more focused on fantasy as a tool to regulate their sense of grandiosity and self-perception as godlike and so on. So male borderlines and I propose recently a new diagnosis, a new diagnostic category of covert borderline. I suggested that men who are diagnosed with borderline actually covert borderline. There's a hybrid between narcissists and borderline. So I think men who are diagnosed with borderline are actually narcissistic borderlines or borderline narcissists or something. They're not pure borderline. I haven't come across in one over 30 years of doing this. I've never come across women who would have qualified to a pure classical diagnosis of borderline personality disorder. There was always narcissism present or psychopathy present or something present, paranoia, paranoid personality disorder. It was contaminated. It was never unadulterated borderline personality disorder. I have come across many women who definitely qualify for an unadulterated BPD diagnosis. So I think this is the difference that men with BPD are narcissistic or psychopathic or paranoid. They're always borderline plus something. I just find that very interesting idea that you would, as I say, I'm trying to square the circle of genetic similarity which seems to me to have a huge level of predictive validity with what you're saying. One way to round it, as you say, would be age difference, man is less BPD and then the woman is BPD, she's younger so they bond over things that they experience in common, hugely. They bond because they're genetically similar and then you presumably would get this idealization of the man and de-idealization, but it would happen to some extent, possibly even both ways if he had some traits himself. Another way to look at it and to assuage your anxiety over genetic similarity is to regard both conditions as post-traumatic conditions. Both borderline personality disorder and narcissistic personality disorders are a reaction to early child trauma and abuse. Many forms of trauma and abuse. Spoiling the child, pampering the child is a form of abuse. There are many types of abuse, children who've been exposed to situations where they couldn't separate from the parental figures, especially the mother, couldn't form boundaries, couldn't individuate, couldn't become individuals, etc., etc., where there was a disruption in the formation of a self, a boundaryed self, ego functions. These kind of children have been traumatized in many ways and they're likely to react by becoming codependence, by becoming borderlines or by becoming narcissists. So, I don't see much of a I am not, I don't belong to the school that regards borderline personality disorder and narcissistic personality disorder as that different. I think they're both post-traumatic conditions and yes, there could be bonding over this joint experience, this common experience of early childhood. Traumas and pathologies resonate. When you come across someone the first thing that resonates is your pathologies, actually. Only much later do you come to know each other on other levels, like your personality, your preferences, your hobbies, your likes, your dislikes, yeah, that comes later. But the first thing that resonates very powerfully is your pathologies. And if you both come from a post-traumatic background and you have a post-traumatic condition with other levels of labels then you're likely to bond and that would complies with their genetics. And then you both go through the same thing, the couple where they would idealize each other they would de-idealize each other they would break up or something, I don't know, but whatever they would rupture, they would then intensely miss each other and then potentially they would what was the term you used? I wrote it down. The engulfment thing, yes. The engulfments would happen, it would completely go away and then presumably there would be a moment where they would re-idealize each other again and it would be like it was in the old days to carry on. Let me tell you this. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual which is the book that has taught us that there is a difference between narcissistic personality disorder and borderline personality disorder. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual is used only in very few countries. The United States most notably to some extent the United Kingdom not fully and maybe Canada. The book that is used by 80% of humanity is not the DSM it's another book it's known as the ICD the International Classification of Diseases and in the ICD in the 11th edition there is no distinction between borderline and narcissistic personality disorders the ICD claims as I've been claiming for three decades the ICD claims that there is only one personality disorder, one diagnosis and that sometimes people are more narcissistic and at other times they are more borderline and sometimes they become psychopathic etc etc there are manifestations there are expressions of the single underlying diagnosis or clinical entity so this I think is much closer to reality any clinician, any practitioner would tell you that a patient may present with narcissistic personality disorder and then the next week that very patient would be very borderline and then the third week he would become psychopathic and the fourth week he would be paranoid that's nonsense. All these differential diagnosis all these artificial distinctions in the DSM are nonsensical they have to do with insurance they have to do with the pharmaceutical industry not with reality in reality we are rivers, we are not ponds we are in flux and in reality when you have a personality disorder you are likely to have the manifestations of all types of personality disorder your personality is effed your personality is screwed so the minute you failed informing a personality, a self, an ego whatever you want to call it whatever you failed in that you are likely to display behaviors which are sometimes identified with narcissism sometimes with borderline sometimes with psychopathy sometimes with schizoid etc so I think this one conversation I think you are right in the sense that people with personality disorders with a personality disorder would tend to be attracted to each other regardless of how this personality disorder manifests from time to time it's true that people with personality disorders are attracted to each other this has been confirmed in numerous studies but the distinctions between NPD and BPD this is an American thing it's not accepted throughout the world and not only an American thing it's a counterfactual thing there's all narcissists on borderline all borderlines are narcissists borderlines are grandiose they are all paranoid all psychopaths are paranoid all schizoid are borderline sometimes can I check on another thing which is interesting that one thing that can be noted when you have a relationship with a borderline is that if that person is under a great deal of stress she can dissociate and become almost like a psychopath like go into a state where she's saying fuck everybody I want to go home I don't want to be here anymore I hate what hates me it's like a psychotic state and then gradually come out of it again can you tell me a bit about that what's the reason for that and how that occurs borderlines are exposed to stress anxiety including anticipated anxiety anticipated abandonment rejection exposure to humiliation in public or private etc etc when they are exposed to these stressors they are not built to cope with them because they can't regulate emotions there's a problem with emotional regulation so what happens then is a process known as decompensation the defense mechanisms of the borderline shut down one by one she becomes defenseless skinless if you wish direct contact with reality without her typical defenses including fantasy defense so then she becomes extremely dysregulated her emotions sweep over her drown her and overwhelm her and in reaction to this she switches there's a process known as switching she switches from one self state to another and typically she switches to a self state known as secondary psychopathy it's a self state where she becomes a lot more because a psychopath doesn't have emotional dysregulation it's a protective self state it's a little like multiple personality disorder she switches to another personality who is better able to cope with the stress and the anxiety and who doesn't another second self state who doesn't which doesn't dysregulate so she's much more and then this second self state the secondary psychopathy is reckless defiant violent or aggressive and so on so forth and so she displays behaviors which are known as acting out she acts out she crazy makes she becomes violent she could be violent she could throw objects or break objects or whatever or she could self mutilate or self harm or she could attack you so it's an adaptive reaction to a very very unstable and dangerous world I mean that's what psychopathy involves to an environment of chaos it's like she suspends herself and allows another sub personality to take over because that sub personality is much better equipped to deal with stress and anxiety by virtue of being psychopathic violent aggressive reckless defiant etc which is exactly what's needed in order to fend off stress and belittle in anxiety minimize it ameliorate it also sometimes one notices that they can go into other states for example I know one personal that's adopted almost like a child like persona like literally like it was like to suddenly adopting the A in American accent which wasn't this person is not American and B almost like speaking to a 6 year old or a 7 year old at a moment of some stress yes regression is one of the options there are multiple sub states it's not limited to the psychopathic thing if the borderline feels threatened it's not limited to resort to the psychopathic sub state but if she feels if she doesn't feel threatened but she feels that things are going badly things are going wrong but she doesn't feel threatened then she might infantilize in order to in order to secure compassion and love and attachment and caring so yeah the regressive sub state is also common infantilized what are the sub states other apart from psychopathic and regressive essentially everything paranoid sub state borderlines become highly paranoid under certain circumstances that's very common a schizoid sub state a borderline would isolate herself avoid a promiscuous borderline would suddenly not have sex for 2 years or so that's a schizoid sub state what was said of a schizoid sub state a schizoid sub state is the outcome of extreme narcissistic injury extreme rejection or extreme abandonment and this is known as modification borderline modification so borderline would modification would induce a total withdrawal from the world total avoidance of the world it is known as constriction her life would constrict so if you rejected a borderline if you said I don't want to have sex with you then she might respond by going into a schizoid sub state if you were to reject her in public in front of people who are meaningful to her significant people you would do it in public in a humiliating manner and you would do it unequivocally and then you would go with another girl within minutes that's likely to induce modification and she can she might react with a schizoid sub state and then she would isolate herself in a room she would never exit the room she would never meet anyone talk to anyone, have sex with anyone and so on and so forth this could last a week or two years that's not telling what is their attitude towards objective truth I can imagine that you get a borderline who let's say they're into fantasy presumably in one moment they might admit that they've had sex with lots of men and then in another moment say I'm a virgin I'm nowhere do they have different cells depending on the certain dances borderlines as you noted they're dissociative they have dissociation as a dominant feature actually one of the diagnostic criteria of borderline personality disorder is dissociation so borderlines are prone to amnesia they're prone to deep personalization I was there but it wasn't me I was observing myself from the outside, I was an autopilot I didn't feel that I'm present so that's deep personalization or derealization the whole thing was a dream the whole thing was a nightmare it was surreal, I didn't feel it's true I didn't feel it's real etc so these are known as dissociative responses borderlines are prone to confabulation but also to lying the difference between confabulation and lying is that you believe, you trust your own confabulations confabulation is intended to breach a memory gap so if you ask a borderline what she has done yesterday and she can't remember because she dissociated she would invent a plausible explanation or plausible narrative and then she would believe in this narrative even though she just invented it co-cocted it that's confabulation but borderlines also lie they have a propensity to lie they're pathological liars what borderlines are not is insane or I don't know, crazy although Kernberg the father of the field suggested in 1975 that borderlines are on the verge of being crazy that's why the word borderline, they're on the border between neurosis and psychosis and borderlines do degenerate or devolve into psychotic state when they're exposed to extreme prolonged hopeless stress and anxiety they can devolve to a psychotic state but the vast majority of the time they're not psychotic, they know damn well what they're doing, they know they're lying they know they're being manipulative or Machiavellian they are in this sense they're highly psychopathic in this sense, even when they are not in a psychopathic, secondary psychopathics of state borderlines are pretty pretty psychopathic for example, they're very manipulative so when a borderline would tell you one day that she's been promiscuous and then the next day she would deny it and say I'm a virgin that's because she's lying and maybe because she has forgotten that she told you because she has dissociated that part but it's not because she's psychotic or in fantasy or whatever it's utterly goal-oriented usually I mean you said you're a self-aware narcissist, we talked about this on the last time and consistent with what you have told me you say you find borderlines attractive now, which again that can be partly shared, trauma, partly genetics whatever but how do you presumably you must have come up with methods of regulating these women you talk about this cycle of idealization it's very very dramatic and traumatic and discombobulating so what want to go to the end of the rainbow, Dorothy to use your term what methods do you employ I don't because my grandiosity won't allow me to make concessions or any modifications to who I am so I I keep failing with borderline women because I refuse to act the wrong so my case is not representative okay so what would you a typical narcissist would project confidence, as I said the narcissist regards the borderline as an ideal partner in his shared fantasy because she idolizes him and idealizes him and regards him as godlike and controls so he controls her so because he controls her this assuages, this reduces or mitigates his abandonment anxiety his own abandonment anxiety so she's perfect as far as an narcissist is concerned she is perfect so many narcissists, myself not included but many narcissists would make concessions would compromise would act the role they would absorb absorb the emotional outbursts of the borderline they would create for the borderline frameworks rigid structure frameworks which would allow her to regulate they would collude in the borderline drama in fantasy, sorry what kind of frameworks would these be well, routines rituals, traditions, common traditions plans for the future promises and so on and so forth these are all frameworks which would allow the borderline to regulate somehow but this is on a show that's all of a sub so presumably the worst thing you could do would be to explain to the borderline she has borderline but this would puncture her her fantasy most borderlines know that they have borderlines but knowing something is not the same as internalizing it I know that I have narcissism so it didn't make an aorta of difference a sink to love difference in who I am and how I behave knowledge must be coupled with an emotional correlate in order to produce insight which is transformative and so the borderline might well reach the conclusion that she's a borderline but it would mean nothing to her because as far as she's concerned she's a perfect entity she's a she is borderline she's a divinity and so she should be worshipped again I don't quite understand if she is divinity and she can be worshipped then how is that congruence with having such intense negative feelings such that you want to cut yourself and even 10% of them die by suicide 70% of them attempt suicide that's hardly congruence with seeing yourself as perfect it's the behaviors that bother them not their self-perception they they simply have you kill yourself and see yourself as perfect because you this perfection cannot be expressed cannot be manifested there is something the transmission mechanism broke down this is precisely what frustrates the borderline to the point of committing suicide is as if she cannot manifest or cannot express who she really is as if she keeps broadcasting or signaling the wrong information about her and people get the wrong impression and consequently treat her wrongly she misbehaves she acts out she slips around she does drugs alcohol or whatever but none of this reflects who she truly is because I talked to women who are borderline and they say they wake up in the morning and the first thing they think is they want to kill themselves yes gradually they feel slightly better and they oscillate between going to kill themselves and feeling good about themselves you would want to kill yourself had you been deprived of the capacity to verbalize your thoughts you're an intellectual you live inside your brain your intellect matters the most now imagine that I were to deprive you of the capacity to communicate your thoughts completely deprived how would you have felt suicidal I wouldn't feel perfect though because I've got that problem you do feel perfect about your intellect even if you don't realize it you do feel that your intellect is perfect you definitely do I'm not I'm terrible at maths but okay alright so you feel you're very grandiose when it comes to your intellect sorry to break the news it comes to your intellect so you do regard your intellect as perfection and if I were to deprive you of the capacity to express it or manifest it in any way shape or form like no way I think you will have become suicidal similarly the borderline believes that she has the potential to be a good person or even a perfect person she's capable to offer love like no one else she's capable to care for people like nobody else she's amazing she's so talented she's so basic and so that and then something an accident of nature something prevents her from manifesting or expressing who she truly is and she's constantly dysregulated constantly unhappy and this is horrible and she could be so different given the right circumstances the right partner the right perhaps techniques to regulate and so on and so forth so borderlines are held bent on suicide and so they are right it's 10 to 11% commit suicide because of the dissonance because of the gap between how they perceive themselves and how others perceive them and how they behave there is such a gap that it breaks them it's dispiriting they could be different oh it seems to me that a lot of the traits that you've mentioned about borderline so emotional being emotionally unregulated being highly sensitive various other things so true of autistics and so it makes me wonder if and we talk about it being difficult to diagnose female autistics it seems to me that there would be likely to be quite a crossover between autism among girls and BPD and that even that maybe there is no autism among girls and we're just dealing with BPD because the symptoms are very similar we do know that there is some affinity between autism spectrum disorders psychopathy and narcissism I am not aware of any serious studies about about a crossover between autism and borderline but as I said before the distinctions between narcissism, borderline these that in my view are artificial so autism and post traumatic conditions seem to have some affinity and if you come to think of it it makes sense because people with autism spectrum disorder experience rejection by peers even by parents early on the experience of being an autist the experience of having autism spectrum disorder is an experience of rejection of humiliation of pain of suffering so it's in itself a kind of trauma have you published on this yes what's the name of the book papers what's the paper I don't remember the title that does make sense on the environmental level it would lead to it people with autism experience trauma by virtue of being people with autism and then the reaction to trauma is the same is the same is grandiose defences is dysregulation so of course they would resemble it's another post traumatic condition to cut the long social that's very interesting the other thing I wanted to ask about isn't it interesting that I was reading that BPD people tend to focus a lot on romantic love idealize romantic love talk about why do you think that's so interesting romantic love yes that's very true people with borderline personality disorder their fantasy is focused on the intimate partner so we call it an object fantasy we have process fantasies an object fantasy that's an object fantasy they're focused on the intimate partner and culturally we have been conditioned to interact with intimate partner partners via the conduit of romance romance is an organizing principle like if you're with an intimate partner you should be romantic you should experience love this is something we've been told over the last 300 years the german idealize and then romanticize we've been told that the only appropriate way to interact with an intimate partner is by being romantic and being in love which of course hasn't been the case prior to the 18th century or 17th century people haven't interacted along these lines there was no romance I mean I've been wondering about that actually I've been thinking because there's a book by Mr. Rougemont called I think is it called Love in the Western World or something like that and he argues you've got basically two phases of romantic love the period from 300 years ago and the period of the troubadours i.e. the 11 hundreds and it strikes me that those are both periods where where it becomes warm absolutely not the same thing there've been also there've been also you know there's also lovers and romantic literature in the early Renaissance in Italy it's not that love and romance are not human experiences they're invented and that's all I'm saying what I'm saying is they have become organizing principles so the troubadours for example the precondition for troubadour romantic love and so on was that the object of love remained unattainable not corrupted in any way shape or form so the troubadour literature poetry and so was about imaginary or unattainable figures like celebrities of today you know this was not it's not the same as romantic love today you simply know there's no other way to interact with an intimate partner in the in the period prior to the 17th century or 18th century more precisely in the period prior to the 18th century it was mostly transactional romantic love was confined to literature or confined to the imagination or confined to erotomic fantasies like the lady the lady in the castle you know this kind of thing wasn't real translated into sex into cohabitation into no way it had nothing to do with real life it was an embellishment not the core people came together transactionally they came together in order to merge estates or land or in order to create a family in order to have children it was a transaction it was all transactional in the 12th century or 10th century your intimate partner would be your business partner but today your intimate partner is the object of your infatuation and limerence and uncontrollable urges and so on and that's why there is a close affinity between the modern conception of romantic love and pathology it's an addiction it's a pathology it's absolutely pathological chemically as well presumably a woman that was a borderline personality precisely because she would have all these insecurities and things like this on the one hand she would be deeply attracted to a man who was narcissistic or who used to be BPD or whatever but on the other hand she would be attracted to a stable boring man who was very different from her but had money she'd be torn between the romantic and the practical not likely with a borderline I mean they're gold diggers what you're describing is more typical of a psychopath but a borderline no a borderline would place emphasis on the trauma on the traumatic wound she has homing mechanisms she identifies immediately the injury of the wound what Freud called the archaic wound it is a bonding of pathologies she gets attached to the pain of the partner she believes that because the partner has experienced this pain he would be able to regulate hers because he because he's so confident and so amazing and so accomplished it must mean that he has some secret formula secret source on how to control the pain how to mitigate and ameliorate the trauma so here's the solution to all her problems he's found the magic formula and so she inexorably is drawn towards him, towards that person but the condition is an initial trauma an initial pain she would not be attracted to a boring run of the mill multi-billionaire, that's of no interest she needs to feel the pain the bleeding, she's like a shark she homes in on the bleeding in the intimate part but controlled bleeding okay, well that's an absolutely fascinating discussion I'd like to thank Sam for coming on again I hope it traps if you're getting attracted to a borderline you watch this and you've learned to think about them and what to do and Sam, so remember to subscribe to Sam's channel it's just Sam Vaclin, you can put it into YouTube and are you working on a book at the moment like that Sam? yeah, I'm actually about to publish one what's that about? it's a bit of an academic thing it's about recasting personality cluster B personality disorders post-traumatic conditions about what we've been discussing okay, so look out for that traps and I will see you soon and goodbye thank you for having me thank you