The sense of self and interpersonal functioning in borderline personality disorder: toward qualitative evidence-based phenomenological conceptualization
Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is typically conceptualized as a disturbance of self-experience. Recent dimensional shift in diagnosis validates the need for conceptual clarity and nuanced understanding of self-impairments. However, these impairments are often examined in isolation from relati...
Gespeichert in:
| Hauptverfasser: | , , |
|---|---|
| Dokumenttyp: | Article (Journal) |
| Sprache: | Englisch |
| Veröffentlicht: |
September 18, 2025
|
| In: |
Qualitative health research
Year: 2025, Pages: ? |
| ISSN: | 1552-7557 |
| DOI: | 10.1177/10497323251376224 |
| Online-Zugang: | Verlag, lizenzpflichtig, Volltext: https://doi.org/10.1177/10497323251376224
|
| Verfasserangaben: | Anna Sterna, Thomas Fuchs, and Marcin Moskalewicz |
| Zusammenfassung: | Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is typically conceptualized as a disturbance of self-experience. Recent dimensional shift in diagnosis validates the need for conceptual clarity and nuanced understanding of self-impairments. However, these impairments are often examined in isolation from relational contexts, resulting in overly static depictions. A phenomenological approach, focusing on lived experience, offers deeper insight into how self, others, and time interrelate in BPD. This study involved 24 hospitalized individuals with BPD (aged 18-29, 83.3% female) who were interviewed using a modified Life Story Interview. We employed a data-driven, inductive, phenomenological thematic analysis to explore the structure of BPD narrative identity. Two superordinate themes emerged as constituting the core of BPD narrative identity: self and the other. Self-experience is marked by identification with one's harmful past, a sense of disconnected present identities, and anticipated unpredictability. Complementarily, the experience of others revolves around a felt sense of ever-present and anticipated hostility, the overintensity of intimacy, and the influence of others on one's self-experience. This indicates that self- and other-experience are inherently linked, co-creating recurrent dynamics that hinder one's development. Lived-experience data illuminate the close-cycled, past-devoted temporal dynamics of self and interpersonal functioning. BPD narrative identity appears paradoxically rigid in terms of its unchanging self- and other-processing patterns, even though its explicit manifestation seems highly changeable. This reveals a diminished capacity for self-transcendence and active self-modification, which may disclose mechanisms underlying symptom maintenance. Incorporating subjective accounts of self and interpersonal functioning may enhance the accuracy of diagnostic criteria and improve their clinical utility. |
|---|---|
| Beschreibung: | Gesehen am 10.02.2026 |
| Beschreibung: | Online Resource |
| ISSN: | 1552-7557 |
| DOI: | 10.1177/10497323251376224 |