The Sense of Self and Interpersonal Functioning in Borderline Personality Disorder

Toward Qualitative Evidence-Based Phenomenological Conceptualization

Bibliographic Data

ID4646102
AuthorsAnna Sterna (0000-0001-8658-7823, Poznan University of Medical Sciences, corresponding author), Theobald Fuchs (0000-0001-9466-4956, Phenomenological Psychopathology and Psychotherapy, Psychiatric Clinic, University of Heidelberg, Heidelberg, Germany), Thomas Fuchs (0000-0001-8644-1875), Marcin Moskalewicz (0000-0002-4270-7026, Poznan University of Medical Sciences)
Year2025
Pages10497323251376224-10497323251376224
Publication date2025-09-18
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueQualitative Health Research (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1049-7323 • E-ISSN: 1552-7557
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/10497323251376224
PMID40965086
OpenAlexW4414330944
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited61

Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is typically conceptualized as a disturbance of self-experience. Recent dimensional shift in diagnosis validates the need for conceptual clarity and nuanced understanding of self-impairments. However, these impairments are often examined in isolation from relational contexts, resulting in overly static depictions. A phenomenological approach, focusing on lived experience, offers deeper insight into how self, others, and time interrelate in BPD. This study involved 24 hospitalized individuals with BPD (aged 18-29, 83.3% female) who were interviewed using a modified Life Story Interview. We employed a data-driven, inductive, phenomenological thematic analysis to explore the structure of BPD narrative identity. Two superordinate themes emerged as constituting the core of BPD narrative identity: self and the other. Self-experience is marked by identification with one's harmful past, a sense of disconnected present identities, and anticipated unpredictability. Complementarily, the experience of others revolves around a felt sense of ever-present and anticipated hostility, the overintensity of intimacy, and the influence of others on one's self-experience. This indicates that self- and other-experience are inherently linked, co-creating recurrent dynamics that hinder one's development. Lived-experience data illuminate the close-cycled, past-devoted temporal dynamics of self and interpersonal functioning. BPD narrative identity appears paradoxically rigid in terms of its unchanging self- and other-processing patterns, even though its explicit manifestation seems highly changeable. This reveals a diminished capacity for self-transcendence and active self-modification, which may disclose mechanisms underlying symptom maintenance. Incorporating subjective accounts of self and interpersonal functioning may enhance the accuracy of diagnostic criteria and improve their clinical utility

Borderline personality disorder · Conceptualization · Interpersonal communication · Interpretative phenomenological analysis · Narrative · Personality · Psychology of self · Superordinate goals · Mental Health and Psychiatry · Personality Disorders and Psychopathology · Psychotherapy Techniques and Applications

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