The paradox of unity in duality: elements for the clinic of borderline cases

Abstract

The article will deepen the debate about the beginnings of psychic constitution and its relation to the etiology of borderline cases. So, although this is not an article about childhood, main axe of this journal, it brings a theoretical discussion about the psychic constitution and the importance of the early interactions of life in the etiology of borderline cases. In the first axe, early objects relationships and the reorganization of the initials attachments as a source of subsidies for a clinic of borderline cases will be discussed. These cases are understood as marked by early trauma in the context of the first object relationships. It is noted, in relation to transference with these patients, vertical defense mechanisms, such as splitting, emerge more frequently than horizontal defense mechanisms, such as repression. The repression was the central concept for the establishment of classical psychoanalytic technique. This fact makes us tackle the need for refinement of analytical technique for approaching more effectively these cases that challenge the classical technique. In this sense, we will study, in the second axis of this paper, the countertransference under a intersubjectivity perspective and the appreciation of the quality of the analytical relationship.