DIS-SOCIALITYAND SELF-HARMING BEHAVIOUR IN BORDERLINE PERSONALITY DISORDER: TWO CLINICAL CASES

Abstract

The self-harming behaviour is a specific symptomatological and clinical expression that frequently appears in the psychopathological frame of Borderline Personality Disorder, and it is highly correlated with affective instability, impulsivity and aggressiveness, and with traumatic experiences during childhood. From a psychodynamic and clinical point of view, the self-harming behaviour satisfies different needs if compared to the suicidal one, and that is really important in the management of the setting. The ‘materialization’of the psychic pain, the acting out of destructive thinking of self-punishment and guilt, the exasperated asking for attention, are important psychodynamic aspects, and all of them substitute the “mentalization” of the inner psychic experience and the integration of splitted parts of Self. These dynamics are described in the histories of two patients, treated with the Sequential Brief-Adlerian Psychodynamic Psychotherapy, currently in the standardization and experimentation phase