Psychoanalytic writers tend to focus on identity—or,
to be more precise, the lack of a stable identity—as the core of Borderline
Personality Disorder (BPD). But in my experience, given what I know about
identity (it’s all a
fraud—a social illusion), the real core
of BPD, and other personality problems with Borderline elements, is
rage. Rage is a raw and primitive form of
anger as a response to intellectual, physical, or
emotional abandonment.
The Rage from
Feeling Abandoned
If you
have problems with borderline symptomatology, and if you look closely, you
will see that all of your interpersonal difficulties in both the past and
the present were—and are—based in feelings of rage as a result
of being—or feeling—abandoned. You will find that your whole being
is given over—consciously or
unconsciously—to inflicting hurtful revenge on
the world around you for abandoning you emotionally.
In essence, this
rage is a sort of knee-jerk attempt to “get back at” the person
who injured you. Even masochistic
self-abuse (also called self-mutilation) can have a component of this revenge.
In cutting, for example, a person lets out her rage in slow,
“controlled” doses; in seeing her blood, she sees herself showing
her wound—her life’s blood—to the “Other” who, she
feels, has disavowed the value of her life.
So, too, attempts
at suicide are attempts at revenge. “I’ll
show them! Maybe when I’m dead they will realize how miserably they’ve
treated me!”
Of course, suicide
can also have the component of a desire to silence the rage. Drugs, alcohol,
and sexuality can also be used to
“silence” the rage. But none of these attempts to distract
your attention from your rage can ever be successful. What is rage, after
all, but an infant crying because she has been abandoned? Ignoring her and
walking away won’t silence her crying. The only way to soothe her is
to pick her up and find out what she needs—precisely what your parents
didn’t bother to do.
The Imaginary,
the Real, and the Symbolic
Now, some persons
will insist that because your original wound is pre-verbal, the psychotherapist
must take on the role of a caring, supportive parent until you can experience
pre-verbal healing and then progress to a higher level of development. Well,
that idea misses the point that you are now an adult with adult language
skills, and that the point of the treatment is to give adult linguistic
expression to a trauma that overwhelmed you as an infant precisely because
the trauma could not be contained symbolically in language.
So what does
“symbolically in language” mean? Well, here it will be necessary
to explain the three realms of psychological experience.
The
Imaginary
The
Realm of the Imaginary derives from the
pre-verbal state of childhood. As children, we need—and desire—others
to take care of our needs, but, without language, we conceive of this caretaking
imaginally; that is, as images in our minds. Hence the realm of the
imaginary is all in our heads, so to speak.
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Now, when a parent
takes care of a helpless infant, the caretaking can be an act of
pure—rather than imaginary—love in which the parent is concerned
only for the infant’s ultimate good.
But once the child becomes capable of language and independent thought, then
caretaking can fall back into the imaginary realm and degenerate into mere
bribery, in which a parent “gives” only to manipulate the child
with game-playing and guilt into behaviors more
suited to the parent’s comfort than the child’s
well-being.
Even in adulthood the desire for romantic fulfillment in another person resides
in the realm of the imaginary because romantic fulfillment depends on fantasies
of someone giving you what makes you feel good. As hard as it is to
admit it, and as much as it contradicts popular culture,
romantic sentiment is based in self-indulgence,
not in a selfless love. |
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The
Real
The
Realm of the
Real
is the place of our essential fragmentation,
vulnerability, and death. It’s the
“place” where we find ourselves wounded and helpless. To most persons,
it’s a terrifying place, and so most persons will do most anything to
hide this reality from their own awareness. In fact, that’s the
psychological function of a symptom: to hide a horrifying reality
behind mental and physical manifestations such as
anxiety, insomnia, lethargy,
nightmares, depressed mood,
and so on.
Psychologically,
then, when you encounter the real you
experience a trauma. Or, more precisely stated, you
experience a trauma if you encounter the real with nothing
but symptoms and defenses from the Imaginary
Realm.
The
Symbolic
Therefore, the
truth is, when “bad” things happen to you, that is reality.
But when you learn to voice your pain openly in language, you raise the Realm
of the Real to the level of the Realm of the
Symbolic. In the symbolic realm, the realm of language, horror
is given containment. Learning to speak about the
pre-verbal pain and terror provides a sense of safety, through an
acceptance of your thoughts and feelings as non-threatening; it desensitizes
you to the troubling aspects of your memories of the traumatic experience;
and it integrates positive growth into your lifestyle. Thus you can
draw wisdom from pain and tragedy.
To Heal the
Rage
So, to heal your
rage, you (a) have to recognize that it affects you to the core of your very
being. It usually takes good, competent
psychotherapy to do this—and it takes patience
and emotional sensitivity. Then you (b) have to recognize in the moment
how feelings of rage follow right on the heels of feelings of insult and
abandonment. And then you (c) have to make the conscious decision to respond
to that insult without rage.
(a) |
The Triggers
of Anger |
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Learn to look
for the actual events (notice the plural) that have been bothering you recently.
Take each one separately. What are all the
feelings about that event? (It won’t be just
anger, because anger is the final, hostile reaction to all the other feelings.)
When you have them all separated out, then you have an idea of what is really
happening to you, apart from the anger.
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(b) |
The Emotional
Bridge |
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Next, follow
each example of hurt back into its roots in the past to all those times and
circumstances when you felt the same way. Carefully scrutinize your childhood
and examine your memories of painful events to discover what you were really
feeling then.
Remember, your
impulsive reactions to present injuries are the unconscious expression of
the original emotions and fantasies you experienced, but suppressed, in
childhood.
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(c) |
The
Remedy |
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Having understood
the previous two steps, now deal with each event separately, according to
the thoughts and emotions specific to that event. Do something constructive
and creative about each problem individually. Choose something different
from our culturally popular Satanic Rule: “Do to others what they do
to you.” Choose something based in true
love. |
It’s as
simple as a-b-c. And that difficult. Because, essentially, you have to surrender
your unconscious satisfaction in being a victim,
and you have to learn to give to the world around you the very thing your
parents failed to give to you: real love.
No
advertising—no sponsor—just the simple truth . . .
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Additional
Resources
Related pages within A Guide to Psychology and
its Practice:
Anger
Autogenics
Training
Choosing a
Psychologist
Confidentiality
Fear of
Psychotherapy
Forgiveness
Identity
Multiple Personalities
and Ego States
Progressive Muscle
Relaxation
Questions and Answers
about Psychotherapy
Reasons to Consult
a Psychologist
Spiritual
Healing
Stress
Systematic
Desensitization
Trauma and PTSD
CONTACT ME
INDEX of all subjects
on this website
SEARCH this
website
A Guide to Psychology
and its Practice
www.GuideToPsychology.com
Copyright © 1997-2008 Raymond Lloyd Richmond, Ph.D. All rights
reserved.
San Francisco, California USA
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