WHAT DOES BORDERLINE MEAN

The word borderline, unlike other clinical descriptive terms, has no o bvious affective or action referent in the patient. This observation m ay shed light on the kind of misalliance so endemic to the work that o ccurs with these patients. The possibility that the diagnosing of ''bo rderline'' might reflect a misrecognition of who has what problem with in an analytic treatment, that it might seriously affect the frame of the treatment, and that it might be an act of projective identificatio n by the analyst are explored. I argue that (a) borderline pathology i s not an entity, but rather the vast developmental territory of severe personality disturbance, and (b) Winnicott's theoretical contribution s to an understanding of the psychopathology of the dyad, particularly around boundary development, are especially helpful.