Actually, the original meaning of borderline was in reference to a borderline between psychosis and neurosis:
Quote:
Borderline Personality Disorder (BP) is a distinct disorder in it's own right. It is not, as many suppose, a 'diagnosis of degree'. To put it another way someone with a diagnosis of BP is not 'half a psychopath', nor is it valid to differentiate between the 'borderline' personality disorder and the 'full-blown'. In part the confusion over the definition of BP is a semantic one. The term borderline has associations with 'halfway' measures and so it is natural to assume that borderline personality disorder means half a personality disorder.
Actually the term refers to the now outdated but once widely accepted notion that sufferers exist on the borderline between psychosis and neurosis* (Heller L. M. 1991). It is the BP's propensity to exhibit both neurosis and pseudopsychosis which is the chief diagnostic paradigm.
http://www.dbtselfhelp.com/html/borderl ... sorde.html
The thing about BPD is that it is all about stuff like fear of abandonment, emotional distress, etc. It is very different from psychopathy, and in many ways I would say that it is... not necessarily incompatible with also being a psychopath, but it is not really
comparable to psychopathy in the way it often seems that people want to compare it.
After having read as much as I could get my hands on about BPD, I find that SBC's descriptions of the disorder fall quite short of the mark. But then I would ask a Magic 8-Ball before looking to SBC's work to learn how anyone thinks. I don't have any respect for his insight into human nature.
*Stern, Adolf (1938). "Psychoanalytic investigation of and therapy in the borderline group of neuroses". Psychoanalytic Quarterly 7: 467–489.
