Evaluating the borderline personality: A study of identity and narrative voice

In closely examining psychoanalytic case studies on self-mutilation a connection emerges between patients' difficulties with verbal expression and the tenuous nature of their relationships with reality. These tenuous relationships may result from patients' continual experiences of having their perceptions of reality challenged by their social audience, particularly when their versions conflict with the group's collective narratives. The question then arises as to why we live in a culture that values singular interpretations of reality, which have become synonymous with "truth." Interestingly, when viewed from a literary perspective, the very traits distinguishing Borderline patients as pathological within a modernist context refigure them as quintessential protagonists within postmodernism. The self-mutilating aspects of BPD may in fact represent an actual, physical manifestation of theoretical conflicts between modernism and postmodernism. Examples of such manifestations include the maligning of certain patient populations, as well as the emergence of new psychiatric disorders created specifically to accommodate "difficult" patients.; Analyzing the relationship between reality and narrative descriptions of it reveals the premium placed on individuals' ability to produce coherent autobiographical narratives. Those lacking this ability, or those producing narratives that defy cultural norms often become labeled as pathological. Re-examining the relationship between narratives and reality challenges existing foundations upon which standards of normalcy become determined. Examining the film Thirteen from the perspectives of the visual and the plot narratives demonstrates ways in which the film challenges prevailing cultural definitions of normalcy. Doing so also provides insight into the ways in which the concept of reality itself has been used as a normalizing device to perpetuate the exclusion of individuals marked as pathological. The very concept of reality therefore becomes exposed as a normalizing device. Acknowledging it as such provides a way to challenge existing definitions of normalcy and its exclusionary effects on individuals who have been marked as pathological within our culture.