thelastpsychiatrist.com - Borderline. Adnotated.

Narcissism -- what I believe to be the primary disease of our times -- is one side of a coin.ⁱ The other side -- the narcissist's enabler -- is the borderline.

If the analogy for narcissism is "being the main character in their own movie,"ⁱⁱ then the analogy for borderline is being an actress.

Note the difference: the narcissist is a character: an invented but well scripted, complete with backstory, identity. The narcissist is trying to be something -- which already has a model. Perhaps he thinks himself an artist type, or a tough guy, or the type interested in spiritualism, or like the guy in the Matrix. Types, characters. The borderline is no one: the borderline waits for the script to define her.ⁱⁱⁱ

Her? Yes. Narcissists are mostly hes, and borderlines hers. (Not always, sure.)

The classic description includes: intense, unstable relationships; emotional lability; fear of abandonment. The borderline has no true sense of self.^iv

Ironically, the borderline is a borderline only in relationship to other people. The borderline has a problem with identity only because other people in the world have stronger identities. Your Dad wants you to be one way, so you do it. Your boyfriend wants a different woman; so you do it. Your husband wants something else; so you do it. Who the hell are you, really? You have no idea, because you are always molding yourself based on the dominant personality in your life.

This [is] done mostly out of fear of abandonment: if you don't "be" the person they want, then they'll leave you, and then what? (Borderlines don't end relationships -- they end relationships for another relationship.)

The narcissist creates an identity, then tries to force everyone else to buy into it. The borderline waits to meet someone, and then constructs a personality suitable to that person.

If a borderline is dating a guy who loves the Dallas Cowboys, then for sure, she will love the Dallas Cowboys. If, however, she breaks up with him, and then dates a guy who loves the Giants, then she'll love the Giants. But here's what makes her a borderline: she will actually believe the Giants are better. She's not lying, and she's not doing it for him; she actually thinks she thinks it's true. Everyone else on the outside sees that it is obviously a function of whom she's dating, but she is sure she came up with it on her own. And she's not play acting: at that moment that she believes, with every fiber of her being, that the Giants are better.

Here's the ironic part: if a borderline was shipwrecked on a desert island with no one around, she'd develop a real identity, of her own, not a reaction to other people.^v Sorry, that's not the ironic part, this is: she'd become a narcissist.^vi

The bordeline has external markings of identity: tattoos, changing hair colors, clothes. You may recall I said almost the same thing about the narcissist: the difference is, of course, the borderline changes her image as she changes her identity -- in other words, as she cahges the dominant personality in her life; but the narcissist crafts a look, an identity, which he then defends at all costs: "I would sooner eat fire ants than shave my mustache." Of course. Of course.^vii

All those silly movies about a woman moving away, or to the big city, and she "finds herself:" that's a borderline becoming a narcissist.^viii

If you look back on past long term relationships you've had, and are completely perplexed as to what on earth you ever saw in each of those people that kept you with them for a year; well, there you go.^ix

This is why narcissists marry borderlines, and not other narcisstists. Two narcissists simply can't get along: who is the main character? Meanwhile, two borderlines can't be with each other -- who supplies the identity? The narcissist thrives with the borderline because she provides for him the validation that he is, in fact, the lead; the borderline thrives with the narcissist because he defines her. And, as she will tell you every single time, without fail: "you don't know him like I do." Everyone else judges his behavior; but the borderline is judging his version of himself that she has accepted.^x

Go back to my white high heel shoes example.^xi The narcissist demands his woman wear white high heel pumps not because he may like them himself -- he might or might not -- but because he is the type of man that would be with the type of woman who wears white pumps.^xii He thinks he's the sophisticated, masculine man of the 1980s, so she damn well better be Kim Bassinger from 9 1/2 Weeks. Blonde hair, white pumps. She could weight 400lbs, that's not the point (though it will become one later.) So she wears the shoes, and starts to believe she likes them, starts to believe that she is that woman. He reinforces this with certain behaviors or language towards her (he'll open the door for her, push her chair in, etc. You say, "well, what's wrong with that?" Nothing, except that he ALSO beats her when she doesn't wear the shoes.)^xiii

It's almost battered-wife syndrome: what keeps her with [that] maniac is that when he's not beating her, it seems like he is actually being kind to her, so great is the difference between being beaten and simply not being beaten.^xiv Meanwhile everything he does wrong has an external explanation: it was the alcohol, he's under stress, etc. And she's doing this rationalizing for herself, not for him, because it is vital to her own psychological survival that he actually be who he says he is, that he actually have a stable identity that things happen to, because her identity depends on his being a foundation.

That's why the therapist has to maintain such neutrality, consistency in the sessions. It's not just to avoid conflicts; by being the most dominant (read: consistent) personality, the borderline can begin to construct one for herself using the blueprints of yours as a guide.^xv

If the borderline sounds like a 15 year old girl, that's because that's what she is. The difference, of course, is the actual 15 year old girl is supposed to be flaky, testing identities and philosophies and looks until she finally lands on the one that's "her." But if you're 30 and doing that, well...^xvi

--------(BTW, if you want to understand the mystery of women's addiction to shoes, here's my take: shoes are the article of clothing that represent possibility. Each shoe is a different look, a different character, and she can select "who" she wants to be that day. You might not notice the difference, but she feels it. This is not borderline -- it's normal, but it's normal because the shoe changes and the rest of her doesn't.)^xvii

1. What does the author want to make true ?

   Relationships are like a coin, right ? Why ? "Because they must have two faces" ? Why do they have to have two faces ? "Well what else would you like them to have, two butts ???".

   The problem, of course, isn't with the type, but with the count ; and more importantly, with how well hidden the count is. Unnamed, but for a reason, escaping notice permanently. Cancelled out. Why ?

   This hiding is how all dysfunctional thought process ever works, yet while everyone's magically well aware this is the fundamental problem when discussing, say, suicidal ideation, or anything else to do with someone else, when push comes to shove and suddenly it's your own inability to notice the number two rather than that other dude's exactly identical inability to comprehend tomorrow's not a strict function of yesterday, so he infers incorrectly either "my yesterday sucks therefore there's no hope for tomorrow" or, for the same money and exactly equivalently, "this stock used to do great and therefore will continue to do so"...

   There is no coin. [↩]

2. This statement of the analogy fails to underscore the important parts : the narcissist is not merely the main character in "their own movie" ; the narcissist actually is the main character in a movie nobody else sees. That's the important, if not central or obvious meaning of "own" in there : that the movie diverges fundamentally from reality such that it is ultimately inadherent to others. This is also the driver of the pathology, because the narcissist must first divest themselves from noticing this split, must manage, somehow, magically, to never ask entire classes of questions, such as "do you too see that dog over there" (or, obviously, "why two") and then, somehow, impossibly reconstruct communion.

   If we were to use less outdated conceptual spaces we could directly say "the narcissist is someone riding on a divergent chain while trying to pretend his current highest block is the same as the main chain highest block". Obviously this sameness works only superficially, hence the pathology. [↩]

3. This also happens to be the fundamental mode of psychological existence in females, for very solid biological reasons we oft discuss and here won't belabour.

   In other words, the indictment of feminity is both inappropriate and improductive. The problem with the borderline isn't that she's a woman, therefore necessarily awaiting to be formed into her adult shape by fire & penis.

   The problem with the borderline is that poorly socialized females misperceive imaginary optionality as available and open to them, thereby delaying their maturation past the point where their own biology can support it. This is the exact same failure mode seen in small children who are exposed to more than two natural languages leading to speech development delay and eventually full blown autism ; it is also the exact same failure mode seen in the "intelligent" cuck bois. This is also the reason I employ age cut-offs : a female that's failed to get herself enslaved by her mid-twenties is exactly like a child who's failed to speak by age 7. [↩]

4. The important part's again elided : it's not that "has no true sense of self". It's that there's exactly one possible sense of the self available, and she's dissociated from it. [↩]
5. This odorously reminds one of that other steaming pile of idiocy with "deserted islands". I confess I don't know what'd happen on "deserted islands", but my guess would be the woman would get so depressed, she'd just lie down and die. "I don't even want to wake up in the morning", you ever heard that ? So... myeah. [↩]
6. Why is Ballas so invested in this whole "women are the real men" meme, anyways ? If you cut a dude's penis off you don't get a broad, you get an injured dude ; if you cut a broad's island off or whatever, pretend-career etcetera you don't get a dude, you just get a cleaner broad. Wtf with the magical thinking already, it's sickening. [↩]
7. Would you sooner eat fire ants than yell "nigger" ? How about the original pantsuit ? Would Roosevelt sooner eat fire ants than shave off the socialism ?

   A notion of the self and narcissism are about as closely related as womanhood and borderline personality disorder, of course -- but that's not the important part. What, precisely, makes Ballas think of the derrogatory example, and not of either important example ? Why is it "some dude with a mustache" rather than the Herostratus that set the last republic on fire just so as to be remembered, or the Mao that took the victor through the "great leap forward" into becoming the very Nazi they had defeated ?

   This is what pantsuitism is all about, you see, the things that "never in a million years would've occured to me". [↩]

8. Amusingly, she always "finds herself" being the same exact thing. [↩]
9. Amusingly, I never had ~year relationships. If it lasts past the few weeks mark, it's probably forever, or at the very least measured in decades -- a situation that probably informs my derisive take on this common consensus "long term". What the fuck long term is this, a year ?! Nicole's been kneeling for about a year, and while this seems long term to everyone we ever run into, "oh, he's my slave, we've known each other for nineteen weeks" bla bla bla... honestly, what the fuck ?! When Chet died we had been together for thirteen years, Hannah first knelt butt-naked in a San Jose alley and got a welt on her ass back in April 2007, that chick in the snow had been my obedient sex toy (taking it with other girls, taking it in the ass, the works) since she was 17 back in the 90s... what the fuck is this sub-decade "long term" supposed to even be ?! [↩]
10. This is actually a lot more common than here discussed -- most everyday retards' notion of "intimacy" revolves around making this switch, from judging behaviour to judging daydreaming (or, in converse terms, "abstract concepts rather than the people themselves"). This nonsense is so deeply entrenched and insistently drilled-in, most new girls experience a lot of emotional difficulty reconceptualizing intimacy and "you will be judged by what you do, not what you interpret" as properly orthogonal, rather than the linear reciprocal extension they were socialized to see them as. [↩]
11. His obsession with white heels and Kim Basinger is a ready lulzfixture in the harem. [↩]
12. And the competent Master demands his women wash make-up off before going to bed not because he likes their faces clean himself -- he might or might not -- but because he is the type of man that would be with clean women.

    What the fuck batshit nonsense is this ?! Of fucking course you do things that have to be done because they have to be done, not because "you like them", this is the education-rape discussion all over again. [↩]

13. And what's wrong with that ? [↩]
14. Alternatively, it's almost like actual, functioning, real education : self-actualizing, in ways and manners the self couldn't even conceptualize before. So great is the difference between something and nothing-the-fuck-at-all. [↩]
15. Bwahahah what the fuck, this is the most ridiculous nonsense I've ever read.

    Go, teach fishes depth perception, why not. You sit by the koi pond, shifting it in and out of focus, and by being the most dominant (read: retarded) lifeform there, you'll show them! [↩]

16. Well, what ? Poor women, that's what. To be perfectly clear : the borderline is a symptom of societal failure, not of personal failure. [↩]
17. I casually felt my slave's cunt last night. "Careful, I'm sopping." she said. "Haha, how come ?" "I think it might be the shoes."

    Her shoes hurt her feet, and she's strongly, healthily & womanly sexualised pain. [↩]