Borderline Personality

Carrol Cox cbcox at ilstu.edu
Thu Mar 7 11:39:32 PST 2002


Re AA etcetera

This is a very vague memory so I won't defend it if someone objects. I believe sometikme in the last year there was a report in Science News of a fairly longterm and elaborate study of the results of three techniques for controlling alcoholism, and that all three (one was AA, Idon't remember the other two) had roughly equal rates of "success."

Carrol

P.S.

Michael Pollak wrote:

"The basic argument was that contemporary bureaucratic-consumerist society had led to a new kind of weaker and more infantile (aka "pre-oedipal") personality type, where the capitalism of small farmers and entrepreneurs and stable two-parent families had previously given rise to autonomous (aka "oedipal") individuals."

Since two cyber-comrades, one from Buenos Aires and one from York, speak highly of psychoanalysism, I can't claim that belief in it leads to bad marxism -- but nevertheless this oedipal business still seems to me to have a much more intimate relation with the Christian Holy Ghost than with the Marxian ensemble of social relations.

Rape, spousal abuse, infantry combat, betrayal by one's superiors, violent death of a close friend can all lead to pretty much the same result -- PTSD, which in turn can have varying effects, including the symptoms that get classified as BPD. No need to to compare humans to apples that fail to ripen (attain maturity) to explain it.



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