Bollas C (1996) Borderline Desire Int Forum Psychoanal 55-9

(1996) International Forum of Psychoanalysis 55-9

Borderline Desire1

Christopher Bollas PhD

The borderline personality unconsciously seeks emotional turbulence because this complex of affect is the shape

of the object of desire Whether these people were intrinsically disturbed as infants or whether the early object

world was itself disturbing they knew the maternal object as disruptive effect This effect then became the shape

of the object so in seeking turbulence they are in fact constituting the primary object As painful and disturbing

an event as this is it is nonetheless desired and finding themselves in states of distress is unconsciously

gratifying

This person cultivates ldquoborderline objectsrdquo which evoke turbulent frames of mind Such an object usually has an

escalatory potential to it so that the borderline may turn to ordinary distressing facts of lifemdashenvironmental

pollution harassment of workers in the work placemdashand transform these facts into self stimulating objects They

bring about a toxic response which constitutes the object of desire

The borderline personality often seeks moments of misunderstanding with the psychoanalyst paradoxically

enough in order to feel closer to the clinician If he feels that he is bringing about irritation or distress in the

analyst the patient feels that he and the analyst are sharing the primary experience together

By persistently interpreting to the patient the unconscious desire of his character the analyst can effectively

deconstruct the analysands pathological attachment and help the patient to understand a complex dynamic that

has always put this person at acute odds with himself let alone with others

Some years ago well into the analysis of a borderline patient it seemed that her frequent emotional

stormsmdashoccasions of profound fragmentationmdashwas a curious object of desire When emotionally upset by

something recollected from her life or something I said or did not say did or did not do her feelings rocketed

into that enraged ldquohomingrdquo intensity that clinicians working with the borderline patient know only too well

except that with this patient it was also clearmdashbecause fortunately she was unusually self awaremdashthat once the

experience arrived it was feverishly embraced What does this mean and what can it tell us about some if not all

borderline analysands

Customarily we give the objects of the internal world a figurative character A good object a bad object a

bizarre object call to mind a specular other in one form or another What if the primary object however is not

so figured Not any object because of course all persons form internal objects But what if the primary objectmdash

the paradigmatic object of objects formed within the first year of lifemdashis experienced not only as disruptive but

as disruption and is therefore represented as emotional turmoil What if the essential status of this primary object

is less in its specular character than it is in the emotional turmoil occurring within the self upon thinking it23

An affect resides where otherwise the matrix of an ldquoordinaryrdquo object the ldquomaterialrdquo of representation

would begin to live Feelings are the object Hence borderline collapses into ego fragments creates a sadly ironic

relation although dreadedmdashit is simultaneously the primary object inevitably therefore desired

mdashmdashmdashmdashmdashmdashmdashmdashmdashmdashmdashmdashmdash

1 This paper was presented at the 39th Congress of the International Psychoanalytical Association San Francisco USA July

30th-August 4th 1995 2 As a frame of mind becomes the object it would otherwise represent in its own right we may see how what Andre

Green (1) terms ldquothe negativerdquo applies in a very particular way to the borderline who maintains attachment to the object

through primarily negative affects Indeed many of the issues raised in this essay bear affinities to Greens exceedingly

important work Le Travail du Negatif especially his examination of the borderline personalities passion for the negative 3 The borderline primary object would be held in this patient as something known but not yet thought what in an earlier work

I termed the ldquounthought knownrdquo (2)and which was explored in terms of the borderline patient in the essay ldquoloving haterdquo

- 5 -

One day my patient flew into a deeply disorganising fury when she felt I made an insensitive comment In

addition to plunging her from respite through idealisation of myself into belief that I was now useless and

untrustworthy in addition to creating intense pain over the loss of me in addition to causing her to fear that she

had mangled me and was now infested by my revenge in addition to many other threads which were woven into

this emotional state her turbulence also seemed blissful It was as if she found an other who had been missing for

a while someone who she knew very well someone who received her evacuative shitting and vomiting as she

flew into it a forceful movement ldquointordquo an object gained by a devolution of herself into invading furies

ldquoYou have seized my comment with an intense pleasure as if I have given you opportunity to be stirred up

yet againrdquo I said Even though she pursued her objectmdashnow in the form of fragmented elemental turbulencemdash

she felt closest to me when I became the occasion of such anguish Later in the session ldquoI think this turbulence

is a most familiar place as if you are hugging something you cannot bear but cannot bear to loserdquo Another day

ldquoI think this is a kind of mamma whom you do not want to leave a mamma feeling that allows you to empty

yourself into her and for her to empty herself into yourdquo many times subsequently ldquoYou are enraged with me

nowmdashI have upset youmdashand become the disturbing spirit who now it has at last arrived you do not want to

leave yourdquo Other times ldquoBy upsetting you as I have I think you feel I have offered you this shit-fitting mamma

and you are confused because you both want this and abhor it at the same timerdquo

Work with borderline patients suggests the following hypothesis Whether inherently disturbed as infants or

disrupted by the environment or both the primary object is less an introjectable possibility (not a specular

phenomenon available for progressive revisionary development) than a recurring effect within the self Like the

wind through the trees it is a movement through the self As any emotion hints at the presence of this object the

borderline is always tempted to find this object by escalating an ordinary feeling into a powerful moving

experience

Such turbulence is not simply an affect Characteristic of this state of mind is violent mental intensitymdasha

thinking and thinking and thinking again about xmdashoften followed by fruitless talking about x that ultimately

floods the mind with excessive mental content on the one hand and overwhelms a listening other with too much

discourse on the other The object becomes a ldquowidening gyrerdquo of thought that defies a center to hold it Neither

thinking or speaking in this manner is a reliefmdashas it might be with another sort of personmdashbut quite the

opposite it further aggravates the pain that has been the occasion of the response in the first place Put in a

familiar vernacular these people are ldquointordquo mind fucking either molesting their own psychic life with

overwhelmingly disturbed thoughts or fucking with the others mind by endless anguished talking They create

this forceful primary object within the other as they unconsciously believe it establishes true intimacy The non

borderline other feels invaded and may take ldquoevasive actionrdquo The borderline other feels that however disturbing

the relation it is nonetheless the source of deepest truth and beauty But finally even the borderlinemdashsuffering

from too much or being too muchmdashmust retreat into self isolation for recovery before inevitably returning to the

object of desire4

The limited focus of this paper is to indicate how this turbulence is an object one that arises out of an

intense emotional moment but which grows into a more complex form as it becomes a type of thinking and a

type of speaking providing an inner shape constituted by a configuration of affect thought and speech

Even though this turbulence exists in the place of the primary object the borderline forms tertiary objects

constructed to exist ldquooutsiderdquo the dominating realm of the primary object Such objects bear the character of

false self work constructions brought together in a fragile and deliberate waymdashand are felt to be an avoidance of

an essential truth They screen the self from otherwise oppressed self states regarding as too endangering to be

liberated One may think of Dante deeply stricken by Beatrice (4) He stares at her across a room transfixed and

tormented and momentarily fears that others have seen his love object but they have instead seen another

woman ldquoin direct linerdquo with his vision ldquoAt oncerdquo he writes ldquoI thought of making this good lady a screen for the

truthrdquo (47) which calls to mind the way borderline people

mdashmdashmdashmdashmdashmdashmdashmdashmdashmdashmdashmdashmdash

4 See Steiner Psychic Retreats (3)

- 6 -

create screen objects stand-ins for the sequestered objects of desire enough to get many of these people through

a childhood

But this primary other is disturbance ldquoitselfrdquo and Dante comes very close to saying that emotion is the thing

ldquoIt hellip could be puzzled at my speaking of Love as if it were a thing in itself as if it were not only an intellectual

substance but also a bodily substance This in reality is false for Love does not exist in itself as a substance but

rather it is an accident in substancerdquo (453) An accident in substance Think of how borderline persons fall into

fragmentations They seem psychically accident prone thrown into torment by the apparent insensitivities of the

other What if the primary object for this person however operates accidentally What if for whatever reasons

the infant or child experienced the mother as disruptive movement eventually knowable as a negative

transformation of the self An accident in substance If so then the object of attachment is the deeply disturbed

emotional wake of the other which includes the fright rage and destructive hate aroused within the borderline

self a persecutory anguish that further binds the self and its effective object in a psychically indistinguishable

combat of negative forces

Like Ahab following the wake of his tormentormdashMoby Dickmdashthe borderline unconsciously follows the

object that stirs the self (5) ldquoAhab never thinks he only feels feels feels thats tingling enough for mortal

manrdquo he says to his crew a few hours before his death In the same passage he thinks next of the wind how it

can be a ldquovile windrdquo that blows ldquothrough prison corridors and cells and wards of hospitals and ventilated them

and now comes blowing hither as innocent as fleecesrdquo (5460) There is says Ahab ldquosomething so

unchangeablerdquo and strong about the wind that has blown him around the seas of the world ldquoWould now the

wind but had a body but all the things that most exasperate and outrage mortal man all these things are bodiless

but only bodiless as objects not as agentsrdquo (5461) The object as agent has a particular kind of bodymdashthat

different sort of thing in itself of which Dante wrotemdasha primary object that we know as its effect

That ldquotinglingrdquo of which Ahab spoke or the love racked states of Dante and other poets who wrote of their

loves as afflictions is the psycho-sensational trace of a particular object of desire The self roused by the other

perceiving it sensorially brought into the transference by instilling in the analysts countertransference a

sensationally rousing storm of feelings that bind the self and other in a con-fusion Not a confusion of thought as

such but a merging through affliction both participants in respiratory relatedness linked by racing hearts

adrenal highs This desire is not from the instinctual core of the self working its way to the wish proper it is

emotion evoked by disturbing impact Once roused the fury of the selfs persecutory force assumes a life of its

own becoming a body shaped and sustained by fury

Borderline persons sustain the other within by marrying partners who continuously rouse them or by

preserving a ldquoborderline objectrdquomdashie the thought of that partner or often an arousing cause such as victim rights

or the environmentmdashwhich allows them to conjure self-afflicting turbulance at any time one that has an

escalatory function starting from a single ldquoinfractionrdquomdashin a case of harassment or toxic spillagemdashto the furious

widening gyre of the psychic apocalypse that surrounds the issue The borderline object functions as an

emotionally impacting stimulus that upon evocation arouses the sensorium The fact that the borderline object is

most often on the border of the external and the internalmdashlinked to an external happening yet immediately

evocative internallymdashtestifies to the unconscious place of the borderlines primary object an outside that is

simultaneously an inside The self is on the border of a simultaneity of valorisations the object that impacts the

ego and causes it alarm the object that is formed by the precise character of the subjects internal life at the

moment

Borderline personalities will often try to share a borderline object with others a form of breaking bread in

the communion of turbulence They have an uncanny knack of bringing up in conversation topics that are

designed to evoke maximum emotional impact in the other often unconsciously playing on the others situational

vulnerability In doing so this object of conversation brings self and other into a brief encapsulated merger

through shared anguish although the non borderline personality will usually rebuff efforts to turn personal

distress into a festival of anguish

Recognition of his desire enables this patient to consider resistance to psychic change To work - 7 -

this through is to progressively abandon relation to the primary object which occasions a very particular type of

anguish Outbursts could often be seen as defiant resurrections of an attachment to the primary object the affect

as thing5 That kind of truth that is disaster one which devolves ordinary life into madness is tempting indeed to

the borderline The catastrophic feels enlivening a strange irony indeed But if we see the absence of catastrophe

as the empty space following the others vanishingmdashand one need only read Moby Dick to see Ahabs profound

loneliness and emptiness as he searches the empty seas for his tormentormdashthen it is possible to see how the

borderline perceives non catastrophic ways of knowing as self destructive

If turmoil is the presence of the object then the borderline persons absence of turmoil is also an affective

representation of the same primary object

Indeed psychic emptiness is part of the others residence within the self an inevitable outcome of the

moving effect of this object upon the self stirred up and then abandoned Full of enranged anguish and

then empty Fullness and emptiness self states that express contact with this object

Renewed emotional turbulence when the primary object reappears is strangely nourishing Feeding off his

or her emotional tempestsmdashit is after all what this other providesmdashsearching for catastrophe from which one

takes succour is by no means unknown to us the worlds literature and art illustrates many examples of the self

feeding off rage feeding off jealousy feeding off loss These feeds are compensatory nourishments as the

borderline turns the object-as-agent into a feeding occasion in order to transform a traumatic relation into

something of a nurturing one The analysts good enough technique is sometimes experienced as strangely

depriving as it seems to prevent such feeds and misunderstanding may be sought in order to gorge the self on

disturbed states of mind

A ldquovertiginous selfrdquo always on the brink of catastrophe the borderline patient awaits catastrophic moments

to ldquomilkrdquo them when they arrive Turmoil is the primary object beckoning them to plunge into the depths and it

is hard to resist the temptation ldquoI know I like to live on the edgerdquo one patient told me referring to a kind of low

level thrill never knowing whether he would fall into the maelstrom of intense conflict or pull himself back to

safety The edge or the border A line which this personality known only too well a feelable border which he

traverses balancing himself coming continuously close to falling yet often able to bring himself back

Borderline personalities often seek work with catastrophe services such as counselling people in

earthquakes or natural disasters serving as volunteers in victim support services They have an uncanny knack of

knowing that such victims are disturbed by the object as agent by something impersonal yet familial something

that touches the core of a self and lives in malignant residence They know what it feels like to believe that ones

life is now irreversibly defined by a shocking event but their unconscious addiction to that shock their search to

revive it in order to gain excitement from itmdashto be close to what is believed to be the ultimate knowing truthmdash

disables them from weaning any other true victim from a life catastrophe We know only too well the

unconsciously devoted victim the man who never recovers from an automobile accident the woman who never

recovers from a rape the man who cannot talk about anything other than an earthquake he was in The cathexis

of the object is barely hidden an object the memory of which stimulates the sensorium and gathers the person

into this truth

Borderline sensationalism binds the self as the ego fragments It is as if the self failed by an apparent object

attacks it violently in mind and comes to pieces in the process yet paradoxically coheres the self by shit fits

mental torment is both the other disrupting the self and the selfs grasp on a reality In their most extreme

statesmdashusually in hospitalmdashborderline patients will actually spit shit and urinate in states of rage which

amongst other thingsmdashand of course this is always overdeterminedmdashconstitutes attempted recovery through

libido a libido turned to the body contributing to a psycho-sensorial-sensationalism supporting the body ego

One is reminded in these moments of the excretory territorialism of the psychotic who uses body excretions to

mark himself his living space and his valued objects More typically however the borderline is covered in

mental pain and range using affect for its sensational effect rather than its communicative

mdashmdashmdashmdashmdashmdashmdashmdashmdashmdashmdashmdashmdash

5 Kristeva (6) argues that the depressives affect is the evocation less of an object than of the thing a conjuring of the real

- 8 -

function There is an autistic-somatic function to such use

It is unfortunate that many of the well intentioned therapeutic endeavours designed to get the borderline

patient to understand and use boundaries to find socially appropriate expressions and to adapt to their

surroundings often support this persons false self Here the false self is a move to be without affect to avoid

engagements that still stir the self The patient may be unusually ldquocontractualrdquo trying to settle conflicts by

redefining agreements and gaining assurances When I arrived two minutes late for one persons session he spent

that hour and the next two enumerating agreements between us for what was proper under such a circumstance

trying to get me to sign a contract so that if I did it again I would be bound to receive a just retribution from

him This false self however is constructed against any feeling As feelings are unconsciously exciting rousing

a hunger the borderline feels himself sliding into a relation defined by intense turmoil So when the analyst

makes a mistake the patient does not know what to do Has the analyst momentarily offered them succour from

the primary objecthelliprdquoie Hungry for something Do you wish to feed off thisrdquomdashand the borderline is tempted

But he will often try to rope in a false self and come to a contract to stem the slide

Psychoanalytic writers from numerous schools of thought have quite rightly emphasised the nature of the

borderlines developmental deficiencies In focusing on borderline desire I wish to concentrate on a particular

clinical problem for the analyst If we see the patients desire for turbulence not simply as a decompensation

occasioned by internal objects falling from structural place or triggered by blows in reality but as a conjuring of

the primarymdashthe self feeding on its own anxiety and hatemdashwe may see why he pursues the very disturbance

with abandon When the patient understands that he takes a form of pleasure in communing with this object

much of the seemingly senseless chaos of borderline attributes makes dynamic sense ldquoI know what you meanrdquo

said one patient ldquoI have always gotton off on it [turmoil] like some kinda sexual thingrdquo

However painful it is to the borderline to discover through analytical interpretation that his coercive

emotionality and clinging grievousness is the realisation of a wish for a state of mind that is the object of desire

it eventually enables him to see the unconscious gratifications sustained through his character ones which when

lessened allows the redistribution of pleasure along different lines

Until then borderline desire seeks what the patient experiences as his deepest truth Behind the ostensibly

offending other (whether analyst or someone else) is the intangible ghost of a profound familiar ldquootherrdquo who

inhabits the self and becomes indistinguishable from it This desire does not have to seek the object it knows

that this intangible force will visit the self regularly enoughmdashin life events or in memorymdashand when it feels

itself being called to this communion believes it is moving toward some awful truth that is at the very essence of

the formation of the self The borderlines desire is to meet his truth and to be moved by it

References 1 Green A Le travail du negatif Paris Les Editions de Minuit 1993

2 Bollas C The shadow of the object psychoanalysis of the unthought known London Free Association Books

1987

3 Steiner J Psychic retreats Pathological organizations in psychotic neurotic and borderline patients London

Routledge 1993

4 Dante Alighieri La Vita Nuova (1292-4) Bloomington Indiana University Press 1962

5 Melville H Moby Dick (1851) New York W W Norton 1967

6 Kristeva J Black Sun (1987) New York Colombia University Press 1989 - 9 -

Article Citation Bollas C (1996) Borderline Desire1 Int Forum Psychoanal 55-9

other What if the primary object for this person however operates accidentally What if for whatever reasons

the infant or child experienced the mother as disruptive movement eventually knowable as a negative

transformation of the self An accident in substance If so then the object of attachment is the deeply disturbed

emotional wake of the other which includes the fright rage and destructive hate aroused within the borderline

self a persecutory anguish that further binds the self and its effective object in a psychically indistinguishable

combat of negative forces

Like Ahab following the wake of his tormentormdashMoby Dickmdashthe borderline unconsciously follows the

object that stirs the self (5) ldquoAhab never thinks he only feels feels feels thats tingling enough for mortal

manrdquo he says to his crew a few hours before his death In the same passage he thinks next of the wind how it

can be a ldquovile windrdquo that blows ldquothrough prison corridors and cells and wards of hospitals and ventilated them

and now comes blowing hither as innocent as fleecesrdquo (5460) There is says Ahab ldquosomething so

unchangeablerdquo and strong about the wind that has blown him around the seas of the world ldquoWould now the

wind but had a body but all the things that most exasperate and outrage mortal man all these things are bodiless

but only bodiless as objects not as agentsrdquo (5461) The object as agent has a particular kind of bodymdashthat

different sort of thing in itself of which Dante wrotemdasha primary object that we know as its effect

That ldquotinglingrdquo of which Ahab spoke or the love racked states of Dante and other poets who wrote of their

loves as afflictions is the psycho-sensational trace of a particular object of desire The self roused by the other

perceiving it sensorially brought into the transference by instilling in the analysts countertransference a

sensationally rousing storm of feelings that bind the self and other in a con-fusion Not a confusion of thought as

such but a merging through affliction both participants in respiratory relatedness linked by racing hearts

adrenal highs This desire is not from the instinctual core of the self working its way to the wish proper it is

emotion evoked by disturbing impact Once roused the fury of the selfs persecutory force assumes a life of its

own becoming a body shaped and sustained by fury

Borderline persons sustain the other within by marrying partners who continuously rouse them or by

preserving a ldquoborderline objectrdquomdashie the thought of that partner or often an arousing cause such as victim rights

or the environmentmdashwhich allows them to conjure self-afflicting turbulance at any time one that has an

escalatory function starting from a single ldquoinfractionrdquomdashin a case of harassment or toxic spillagemdashto the furious

widening gyre of the psychic apocalypse that surrounds the issue The borderline object functions as an

emotionally impacting stimulus that upon evocation arouses the sensorium The fact that the borderline object is

most often on the border of the external and the internalmdashlinked to an external happening yet immediately

evocative internallymdashtestifies to the unconscious place of the borderlines primary object an outside that is

simultaneously an inside The self is on the border of a simultaneity of valorisations the object that impacts the

ego and causes it alarm the object that is formed by the precise character of the subjects internal life at the

moment

Borderline personalities will often try to share a borderline object with others a form of breaking bread in

the communion of turbulence They have an uncanny knack of bringing up in conversation topics that are

designed to evoke maximum emotional impact in the other often unconsciously playing on the others situational

vulnerability In doing so this object of conversation brings self and other into a brief encapsulated merger

through shared anguish although the non borderline personality will usually rebuff efforts to turn personal

distress into a festival of anguish

Recognition of his desire enables this patient to consider resistance to psychic change To work - 7 -

this through is to progressively abandon relation to the primary object which occasions a very particular type of

anguish Outbursts could often be seen as defiant resurrections of an attachment to the primary object the affect

as thing5 That kind of truth that is disaster one which devolves ordinary life into madness is tempting indeed to

the borderline The catastrophic feels enlivening a strange irony indeed But if we see the absence of catastrophe

as the empty space following the others vanishingmdashand one need only read Moby Dick to see Ahabs profound

loneliness and emptiness as he searches the empty seas for his tormentormdashthen it is possible to see how the

borderline perceives non catastrophic ways of knowing as self destructive

If turmoil is the presence of the object then the borderline persons absence of turmoil is also an affective

representation of the same primary object

Indeed psychic emptiness is part of the others residence within the self an inevitable outcome of the

moving effect of this object upon the self stirred up and then abandoned Full of enranged anguish and

then empty Fullness and emptiness self states that express contact with this object

Renewed emotional turbulence when the primary object reappears is strangely nourishing Feeding off his

or her emotional tempestsmdashit is after all what this other providesmdashsearching for catastrophe from which one

takes succour is by no means unknown to us the worlds literature and art illustrates many examples of the self

feeding off rage feeding off jealousy feeding off loss These feeds are compensatory nourishments as the

borderline turns the object-as-agent into a feeding occasion in order to transform a traumatic relation into

something of a nurturing one The analysts good enough technique is sometimes experienced as strangely

depriving as it seems to prevent such feeds and misunderstanding may be sought in order to gorge the self on

disturbed states of mind

A ldquovertiginous selfrdquo always on the brink of catastrophe the borderline patient awaits catastrophic moments

to ldquomilkrdquo them when they arrive Turmoil is the primary object beckoning them to plunge into the depths and it

is hard to resist the temptation ldquoI know I like to live on the edgerdquo one patient told me referring to a kind of low

level thrill never knowing whether he would fall into the maelstrom of intense conflict or pull himself back to

safety The edge or the border A line which this personality known only too well a feelable border which he

traverses balancing himself coming continuously close to falling yet often able to bring himself back

Borderline personalities often seek work with catastrophe services such as counselling people in

earthquakes or natural disasters serving as volunteers in victim support services They have an uncanny knack of

knowing that such victims are disturbed by the object as agent by something impersonal yet familial something

that touches the core of a self and lives in malignant residence They know what it feels like to believe that ones

life is now irreversibly defined by a shocking event but their unconscious addiction to that shock their search to

revive it in order to gain excitement from itmdashto be close to what is believed to be the ultimate knowing truthmdash

disables them from weaning any other true victim from a life catastrophe We know only too well the

unconsciously devoted victim the man who never recovers from an automobile accident the woman who never

recovers from a rape the man who cannot talk about anything other than an earthquake he was in The cathexis

of the object is barely hidden an object the memory of which stimulates the sensorium and gathers the person

into this truth

Borderline sensationalism binds the self as the ego fragments It is as if the self failed by an apparent object

attacks it violently in mind and comes to pieces in the process yet paradoxically coheres the self by shit fits

mental torment is both the other disrupting the self and the selfs grasp on a reality In their most extreme

statesmdashusually in hospitalmdashborderline patients will actually spit shit and urinate in states of rage which

amongst other thingsmdashand of course this is always overdeterminedmdashconstitutes attempted recovery through

libido a libido turned to the body contributing to a psycho-sensorial-sensationalism supporting the body ego

One is reminded in these moments of the excretory territorialism of the psychotic who uses body excretions to

mark himself his living space and his valued objects More typically however the borderline is covered in

mental pain and range using affect for its sensational effect rather than its communicative

mdashmdashmdashmdashmdashmdashmdashmdashmdashmdashmdashmdashmdash

5 Kristeva (6) argues that the depressives affect is the evocation less of an object than of the thing a conjuring of the real

- 8 -

function There is an autistic-somatic function to such use

It is unfortunate that many of the well intentioned therapeutic endeavours designed to get the borderline

patient to understand and use boundaries to find socially appropriate expressions and to adapt to their

surroundings often support this persons false self Here the false self is a move to be without affect to avoid

engagements that still stir the self The patient may be unusually ldquocontractualrdquo trying to settle conflicts by

redefining agreements and gaining assurances When I arrived two minutes late for one persons session he spent

that hour and the next two enumerating agreements between us for what was proper under such a circumstance

trying to get me to sign a contract so that if I did it again I would be bound to receive a just retribution from

him This false self however is constructed against any feeling As feelings are unconsciously exciting rousing

a hunger the borderline feels himself sliding into a relation defined by intense turmoil So when the analyst

makes a mistake the patient does not know what to do Has the analyst momentarily offered them succour from

the primary objecthelliprdquoie Hungry for something Do you wish to feed off thisrdquomdashand the borderline is tempted

But he will often try to rope in a false self and come to a contract to stem the slide

Psychoanalytic writers from numerous schools of thought have quite rightly emphasised the nature of the

borderlines developmental deficiencies In focusing on borderline desire I wish to concentrate on a particular

clinical problem for the analyst If we see the patients desire for turbulence not simply as a decompensation

occasioned by internal objects falling from structural place or triggered by blows in reality but as a conjuring of

the primarymdashthe self feeding on its own anxiety and hatemdashwe may see why he pursues the very disturbance

with abandon When the patient understands that he takes a form of pleasure in communing with this object

much of the seemingly senseless chaos of borderline attributes makes dynamic sense ldquoI know what you meanrdquo

said one patient ldquoI have always gotton off on it [turmoil] like some kinda sexual thingrdquo

However painful it is to the borderline to discover through analytical interpretation that his coercive

emotionality and clinging grievousness is the realisation of a wish for a state of mind that is the object of desire

it eventually enables him to see the unconscious gratifications sustained through his character ones which when

lessened allows the redistribution of pleasure along different lines

Until then borderline desire seeks what the patient experiences as his deepest truth Behind the ostensibly

offending other (whether analyst or someone else) is the intangible ghost of a profound familiar ldquootherrdquo who

inhabits the self and becomes indistinguishable from it This desire does not have to seek the object it knows

that this intangible force will visit the self regularly enoughmdashin life events or in memorymdashand when it feels

itself being called to this communion believes it is moving toward some awful truth that is at the very essence of

the formation of the self The borderlines desire is to meet his truth and to be moved by it

References 1 Green A Le travail du negatif Paris Les Editions de Minuit 1993

2 Bollas C The shadow of the object psychoanalysis of the unthought known London Free Association Books

1987

3 Steiner J Psychic retreats Pathological organizations in psychotic neurotic and borderline patients London

Routledge 1993

4 Dante Alighieri La Vita Nuova (1292-4) Bloomington Indiana University Press 1962

5 Melville H Moby Dick (1851) New York W W Norton 1967

6 Kristeva J Black Sun (1987) New York Colombia University Press 1989 - 9 -

Article Citation Bollas C (1996) Borderline Desire1 Int Forum Psychoanal 55-9

feeding off rage feeding off jealousy feeding off loss These feeds are compensatory nourishments as the

borderline turns the object-as-agent into a feeding occasion in order to transform a traumatic relation into

something of a nurturing one The analysts good enough technique is sometimes experienced as strangely

depriving as it seems to prevent such feeds and misunderstanding may be sought in order to gorge the self on

disturbed states of mind

A ldquovertiginous selfrdquo always on the brink of catastrophe the borderline patient awaits catastrophic moments

to ldquomilkrdquo them when they arrive Turmoil is the primary object beckoning them to plunge into the depths and it

is hard to resist the temptation ldquoI know I like to live on the edgerdquo one patient told me referring to a kind of low

level thrill never knowing whether he would fall into the maelstrom of intense conflict or pull himself back to

safety The edge or the border A line which this personality known only too well a feelable border which he

traverses balancing himself coming continuously close to falling yet often able to bring himself back

Borderline personalities often seek work with catastrophe services such as counselling people in

earthquakes or natural disasters serving as volunteers in victim support services They have an uncanny knack of

knowing that such victims are disturbed by the object as agent by something impersonal yet familial something

that touches the core of a self and lives in malignant residence They know what it feels like to believe that ones

life is now irreversibly defined by a shocking event but their unconscious addiction to that shock their search to

revive it in order to gain excitement from itmdashto be close to what is believed to be the ultimate knowing truthmdash

disables them from weaning any other true victim from a life catastrophe We know only too well the

unconsciously devoted victim the man who never recovers from an automobile accident the woman who never

recovers from a rape the man who cannot talk about anything other than an earthquake he was in The cathexis

of the object is barely hidden an object the memory of which stimulates the sensorium and gathers the person

into this truth

Borderline sensationalism binds the self as the ego fragments It is as if the self failed by an apparent object

attacks it violently in mind and comes to pieces in the process yet paradoxically coheres the self by shit fits

mental torment is both the other disrupting the self and the selfs grasp on a reality In their most extreme

statesmdashusually in hospitalmdashborderline patients will actually spit shit and urinate in states of rage which

amongst other thingsmdashand of course this is always overdeterminedmdashconstitutes attempted recovery through

libido a libido turned to the body contributing to a psycho-sensorial-sensationalism supporting the body ego

One is reminded in these moments of the excretory territorialism of the psychotic who uses body excretions to

mark himself his living space and his valued objects More typically however the borderline is covered in

mental pain and range using affect for its sensational effect rather than its communicative

mdashmdashmdashmdashmdashmdashmdashmdashmdashmdashmdashmdashmdash

5 Kristeva (6) argues that the depressives affect is the evocation less of an object than of the thing a conjuring of the real

- 8 -

function There is an autistic-somatic function to such use

It is unfortunate that many of the well intentioned therapeutic endeavours designed to get the borderline

patient to understand and use boundaries to find socially appropriate expressions and to adapt to their

surroundings often support this persons false self Here the false self is a move to be without affect to avoid

engagements that still stir the self The patient may be unusually ldquocontractualrdquo trying to settle conflicts by

redefining agreements and gaining assurances When I arrived two minutes late for one persons session he spent

that hour and the next two enumerating agreements between us for what was proper under such a circumstance

trying to get me to sign a contract so that if I did it again I would be bound to receive a just retribution from

him This false self however is constructed against any feeling As feelings are unconsciously exciting rousing

a hunger the borderline feels himself sliding into a relation defined by intense turmoil So when the analyst

makes a mistake the patient does not know what to do Has the analyst momentarily offered them succour from

the primary objecthelliprdquoie Hungry for something Do you wish to feed off thisrdquomdashand the borderline is tempted

But he will often try to rope in a false self and come to a contract to stem the slide

Psychoanalytic writers from numerous schools of thought have quite rightly emphasised the nature of the

borderlines developmental deficiencies In focusing on borderline desire I wish to concentrate on a particular

clinical problem for the analyst If we see the patients desire for turbulence not simply as a decompensation

occasioned by internal objects falling from structural place or triggered by blows in reality but as a conjuring of

the primarymdashthe self feeding on its own anxiety and hatemdashwe may see why he pursues the very disturbance

with abandon When the patient understands that he takes a form of pleasure in communing with this object

much of the seemingly senseless chaos of borderline attributes makes dynamic sense ldquoI know what you meanrdquo

said one patient ldquoI have always gotton off on it [turmoil] like some kinda sexual thingrdquo

However painful it is to the borderline to discover through analytical interpretation that his coercive

emotionality and clinging grievousness is the realisation of a wish for a state of mind that is the object of desire

it eventually enables him to see the unconscious gratifications sustained through his character ones which when

lessened allows the redistribution of pleasure along different lines

Until then borderline desire seeks what the patient experiences as his deepest truth Behind the ostensibly

offending other (whether analyst or someone else) is the intangible ghost of a profound familiar ldquootherrdquo who

inhabits the self and becomes indistinguishable from it This desire does not have to seek the object it knows

that this intangible force will visit the self regularly enoughmdashin life events or in memorymdashand when it feels

itself being called to this communion believes it is moving toward some awful truth that is at the very essence of

the formation of the self The borderlines desire is to meet his truth and to be moved by it

References 1 Green A Le travail du negatif Paris Les Editions de Minuit 1993

2 Bollas C The shadow of the object psychoanalysis of the unthought known London Free Association Books

1987

3 Steiner J Psychic retreats Pathological organizations in psychotic neurotic and borderline patients London

Routledge 1993

4 Dante Alighieri La Vita Nuova (1292-4) Bloomington Indiana University Press 1962

5 Melville H Moby Dick (1851) New York W W Norton 1967

6 Kristeva J Black Sun (1987) New York Colombia University Press 1989 - 9 -

Article Citation Bollas C (1996) Borderline Desire1 Int Forum Psychoanal 55-9

However painful it is to the borderline to discover through analytical interpretation that his coercive

emotionality and clinging grievousness is the realisation of a wish for a state of mind that is the object of desire

it eventually enables him to see the unconscious gratifications sustained through his character ones which when

lessened allows the redistribution of pleasure along different lines

Until then borderline desire seeks what the patient experiences as his deepest truth Behind the ostensibly

offending other (whether analyst or someone else) is the intangible ghost of a profound familiar ldquootherrdquo who

inhabits the self and becomes indistinguishable from it This desire does not have to seek the object it knows

that this intangible force will visit the self regularly enoughmdashin life events or in memorymdashand when it feels

itself being called to this communion believes it is moving toward some awful truth that is at the very essence of

the formation of the self The borderlines desire is to meet his truth and to be moved by it

References 1 Green A Le travail du negatif Paris Les Editions de Minuit 1993

2 Bollas C The shadow of the object psychoanalysis of the unthought known London Free Association Books

1987

3 Steiner J Psychic retreats Pathological organizations in psychotic neurotic and borderline patients London

Routledge 1993

4 Dante Alighieri La Vita Nuova (1292-4) Bloomington Indiana University Press 1962

5 Melville H Moby Dick (1851) New York W W Norton 1967

6 Kristeva J Black Sun (1987) New York Colombia University Press 1989 - 9 -

Article Citation Bollas C (1996) Borderline Desire1 Int Forum Psychoanal 55-9