Borderline pathologies in the child: Traumatic origin or primal traumatism

Many American studies have recently underlined the importance of traumatism in early childhood, particularly sexual abuse, in the genesis of borderlin e pathologies in which it is considered to be the main etiological factor. Some of these studies have gone so far as to make a parallel between the de velopment of posttraumatic stress states and borderline personality trouble s. Although we cannot ignore the role of these major factor of stress, it s eems difficult to limit the etiology of the above-mentioned troubles to suc h cause-and-effect relationships, without taking into account elements whic h seem less visible, such as distorsions in early mother-child interactions , The hypothesis proposed by other authors is that of the intervention of an affliction by such interactions in the etiopathogenicity of these troubles, at the origin - among other things - of a failure of containment and of th e protective shield function. This would explain the person's heightened vu lnerability to any factor of stress, and principally, his difficulty in ela borating and going beyond experiences of fright as encountered in those eve nts described above. The existence of sexual abuse is certainly frequent in these pathologies, as well as in others... but the existence of dissonance between the newborn child and his entourage is perhaps lust as much so. La ter psychic traumatisms may come along and destructure a personality which had been superficially adapted lcp until that moment.