American, Woman, Borderline: The material-discursive production ofborderline personality. Öffentlichkeit

Abstract

American culture. Typically framed as a creation of psychoanalysis and psychiatry, borderline phenomena emerge from the intra-actions of several entangled discourses, namely psychoanalysis, feminism, and neurology. Rather than locating borderline phenomena in any one person, therapeutic dyad, or discourse, I argue that ultimately BPD is a complex, dynamic, material-discursive system.

Using a contemporary feminist analysis of BPD, I contend that the study of matter--the biological, neurological, bodily stuff of BPD--has been alienated from the study of meaning in the history of BPD clinical formulation and theorization. The prioritization of one disciplinary method over another, restricts clinical and cultural apprehension of not only borderline phenomena but, in so far as borderline experience and gendered experience are intertwined, gendered phenomena as well.

In each chapter, I address the question of how gender figures in the ongoing material-discursive production of BPD in women. In Chapter 1, I review the extant literature in psychoanalysis, feminism, and neuroscience on the borderline concept and syndrome. In Chapter 2, I analyze the ways in which gender and psychoanalysis converge to create the occasion for borderline personality disorder's emergence and proliferation in contemporary US clinics. In Chapter 3, I analyze borderline memoirs as a writing technology and address the ways in which memoir integrates bodily and discursive processes. In Chapter 4, I review the current state of neurology in the study of borderline brains. A revised conceptualization of projective mechanisms provides an apparatus for the productive engagement of borderline phenomena at the intersections of feminism, psychoanalysis, and neuro-imaging technologies. Finally, I conclude by reflecting on what borderline phenomena are and why it is important to continue ask this question.

Table of Contents

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About this Dissertation

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School	Laney Graduate School
Department	Women's Studies
Degree	PhD
Submission	Dissertation
Language	English
Research Field	Psychology, Personality
Stichwort	Psychiatry Memoirs Borderline Personality Disorder Feminism Psychoanalysis
Committee Chair / Thesis Advisor	Wilson, Elizabeth, Emory University Garland-Thomson, Rosemarie, Emory University
Committee Members	Huffer, Lynne R, Emory University

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