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International Forum of Psychoanalysis

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Borderline desire
a
Christopher Bollas
a
32 A West 94th Street, New York, NY, 10025, USA
Published online: 24 Dec 2007.

To cite this article: Christopher Bollas (1996) Borderline desire, International Forum of Psychoanalysis, 5:1, 5-10, DOI:
10.1080/08037069608412717

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Int Forum Psychoanal 5: 5-10, 1996

Borderline Desire’
Christopher Bollas, New York, USA

Bollas C. Borderline Desire. Int Forum Psychoanal l996;S:S- 10. Stockholm, ISSN 0803-706X.
The borderline personality unconsciously seeks emotional turbulence because this complex of affect is
the shape of the object of desire. Whether these people were intrinsically disturbed as infants, or,
whether the early object world was itself disturbing, they knew the maternal object as disruptive effect.
This effect then became the shape of the object, so, in seeking turbulence they are in fact constituting
the primary object. As painful and disturbing an event as this is, it is nonetheless desired and finding
themselves in states of distress is unconsciously gratifying.
This person cultivates “borderline objects” which evoke turbulent frames of mind. Such an object
usually has an escalatory potential to it, so that the borderline may turn to ordinary distressing facts
of life-environmental pollution, harassment of workers in the work place-and transform these
facts into self stimulating objects. They bring about a toxic response which constitutes the object of
desire.
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The borderline personality often seeks moments of misunderstanding with the psychoanalyst
paradoxically enough in order to feel closer to the clinician. If he feels that he is bringing about
irritation or distress in the analyst, the patient feels that he and the analyst are sharing the primary
experience together.
By persistently interpreting to the patient the unconscious desire of his character the analyst
can effectively deconstruct the analysand’s pathological attachment and help the patient to
understand a complex dynamic that has always put this person at acute odds with himself, let
alone with others.
Christopher Bollas. Ph. D., 32 A West 94th Street, New York, N Y I0025. USA

Some years ago, well into the analysis of a border- object of objects formed within the first year of
line patient, it seemed that her frequent emotional life-is experienced not only as disruptive but as
storms-occasions of profound fragmentation- disruption and is therefore represented as emo-
was a curious object of desire. When emotionally tional turmoil? What if the essential status of this
upset by something recollected from her life or primary object is less in its specular character than
something I said or did not say, did or did not do, it is in the emotional turmoil occurring within the
her feelings rocketed into that enraged “homing” self upon thinking it?273
intensity that clinicians working with the border- An affect resides where otherwise the matrix of
line patient know only too well; except that with an “ordinary” object, the “material” of represen-
this patient, it was also clear-because fortunately tation, would begin to live. Feelings are the object.
she was unusually self aware-that once the Hence, borderline collapses into ego fragments
experience arrived it was feverishly embraced. creates a sadly ironic relation: although
What does this mean and what can it tell us dreaded-it is simultaneously the primary object;
about some if not all borderline analysands? inevitably therefore, desired.
Customarily we give the objects of the internal
world a figurative character. A good object, a bad
object, a bizarre object call to mind a specular As a frame of mind becomes the object it would otherwise
represent in its own right, we may see how what Andre Green
other, in one form or another. What if the primary ( I ) terms “the negative” applies in a very particular way to the
object, however, is not so figured? Not any object, borderline, who maintains attachment to the object through
primarily negative affects. Indeed, many of the issues raised in
because of course all persons form internal objects. this essay bear affinities to Green’s exceedingly important work,
But what if the primary object-the paradigmatic Le Trnvnil du Negnrif, especially his examination of the borderline
personalities passion for the negative.
’ This paper was presented at the 39th Congress of the International
The borderline primary object would be held in this patient as
something known but not yet thought, what in an earlier work I
Psychoanalytical Association, San Francisco, USA, July 30th- termed the “unthought known” (2) and which was explored in
August 4th, 1995. terms of the borderline patient in the essay “loving hate”.

0 Scandinavian University Press 1996. ISSN 0803-706X

6 c BOII~S Int Forum Psychoanal 5, 1996

One day my patient flew into a deeply disorga- again about x-often followed by fruitless talking
nising fury when she felt I made an insensitive about x that ultimately floods the mind with
comment. In addition to plunging her from respite excessive mental content on the one hand and
through idealisation of myself into belief that I was overwhelms a listening other with too much dis-
now useless and untrustworthy, in addition to course on the other. The object becomes a “widen-
creating intense pain over the loss of me, in addi- ing gyre” of thought that defies a center to hold it.
tion to causing her to fear that she had mangled Neither thinking or speaking in this manner is a
me and was now infested by my revenge, in addi- relief-as it might be with another sort of
tion to many other threads which were woven into person-but quite the opposite: it further aggra-
this emotional state her turbulence also seemed vates the pain that has been the occasion of the
blissful. It was as if she found an other who had response in the first place. Put in a familiar verna-
been missing for a while, someone who she knew cular, these people are “into” mind fucking: either
very well, someone who received her evacuative molesting their own psychic life with overwhel-
shitting and vomiting as she flew into it, a forceful mingly disturbed thoughts or fucking with the
movement “into” an object gained by a devolution other’s mind by endless anguished talking. They
of herself into invading furies. create this forceful primary object within the other
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“You have seized my comment with an intense as they unconsciously believe it establishes true
pleasure, as if I have given you opportunity to be intimacy. The non borderline other feels invaded
stirred up yet again” I said, Even though she and may take “evasive action”. The borderline
pursued her object-now in the form of fragmen- other feels that however disturbing the relation, it
ted elemental turbulence-she felt closest to me is nonetheless the source of deepest truth and
when I became the occasion of such anguish. Later beauty. But finally even the borderline-suffering
in the session: “I think this turbulence is a most from too much or being too much-must retreat
familiar place, as if you are hugging something you into self isolation for recovery before inevitably
cannot bear, but cannot bear to lose”. Another returning to the object of desire4.
day: “I think this is a kind of mamma whom you The limited focus of this paper is to indicate how
do not want to leave, a mamma feeling that allows this turbulence is an object, one that arises out of
you to empty yourself into her, and for her to an intense emotional moment, but which grows
empty herself into you.” many times subsequently: into a more complex form, as it becomes a type of
“You are enraged with me now-I have upset thinking and a type of speaking, providing an
you-and become the disturbing spirit, who, now inner shape constituted by a configuration of
it has at last arrived, you do not want to leave affect, thought, and speech.
you.” Other times: “By upsetting you as I have, I Even though this turbulence exists in the place
think you feel I have offered you this shit-fitting of the primary object, the borderline forms tertiary
mamma, and you are confused because you both objects constructed to exist “outside” the domi-
want this and abhor it at the same time.” nating realm of the primary object. Such objects
Work with borderline patients suggests the fol- bear the character of false self work, constructions
lowing hypothesis. Whether inherently disturbed brought together in a fragile and deliberate way-
as infants or disrupted by the environment, or and are felt to be an avoidance of an essential
both, the primary object is less an introjectable truth. They screen the self from otherwise
possibility (not a specular phenomenon available oppressed self states regarding as too endangering
for progressive revisionary development) than a to be liberated. One may think of Dante, deeply
recurring effect within the self. Like the wind stricken by Beatrice (4). He stares at her across a
through the trees, it is a movement through the room transfixed and tormented and momentarily
self. As any emotion hints at the presence of this fears that others have seen his love object, but they
object, the borderline is always tempted to find this have instead seen another woman “in direct line”
object by escalating an ordinary feeling into a with his vision. “At once”, he writes “I thought of
powerful moving experience. making this good lady a screen for the truth” (4 : 7)
Such turbulence is not simply an affect. Char- which calls to mind the way borderline people
acteristic of this state of mind is violent mental
intensity-a thinking and thinking and thinking See Steiner, Psychic Retreats (3).
Int Forum Psychoanal 5,1996 Borderline desire 7
create screen objects, stand-ins for the sequestered sensational trace of a particular object of desire.
objects of desire: enough to get many of these The self roused by the other, perceiving it sen-
people through a childhood. sorially, brought into the transference by instilling
But this primary other is disturbance “itself’ in the analyst’s countertransference a sensationally
and Dante comes very close to saying that emotion rousing storm of feelings that bind the self and
is the thing. “It . . . could be puzzled at my speak- other in a con-fusion. Not a confusion of thought
ing of Love as if it were a thing in itself, as if it were as such, but a merging through affliction, both
not only an intellectual substance but also a bodily participants in respiratory relatedness, linked by
substance. This in reality is false, for Love does not racing hearts, adrenal highs. This desire is not
exist in itself as a substance, but rather it is an from the instinctual core of the self, working its
accident in substance” (4: 53). An accident in way to the wish proper; it is emotion evoked by
substance. Think of how borderline persons fall disturbing impact. Once roused, the fury of the
into fragmentations. They seem psychically acci- self s persecutory force assumes a life of its own,
dent prone, thrown into torment by the apparent becoming a body shaped and sustained by fury.
insensitivities of the other. What if the primary Borderline persons sustain the other within by
object for this person, however, operates acciden- marrying partners who continuously rouse them,
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tally? What if for whatever reasons, the infant or or by preserving a “borderline object”-i.e. the
child experienced the mother as disruptive move- thought of that partner or often an arousing cause
ment, eventually knowable as a negative transfor- such as victim rights or the environment-which
mation of the self? An accident in substance? If so, allows them to conjure self-afflicting turbulance at
then the object of attachment is the deeply dis- any time, one that has an escalatory function:
turbed emotional wake of the other which includes starting from a single “infraction”-in a case of
the fright, rage and destructive hate aroused harassment or toxic spillage-to the furious
within the borderline self, a persecutory anguish widening gyre of the psychic apocalypse that
that further binds the self and its effective object in surrounds the issue. The borderline object func-
a psychically indistinguishable combat of negative tions as an emotionally impacting stimulus, that
forces. upon evocation arouses the sensorium. The fact
Like Ahab following the wake of his tormen- that the borderline object is most often on the
tor-Moby Dick- the borderline unconsciously border of the external and the internal-linked to
follows the object that stirs the self. (5) “Ahab an external happening, yet immediately evocative
never thicks; he only feels, feels, feels; thats tin- internally-testifies to the unconscious place of
gling enough for mortal man!” he says to his crew the borderline’s primary object: an outside that is
a few hours before his death. In the same passage simultaneously an inside. The self is on the border
he thinks next of the wind: how it can be a “vile of a simultaneity of valorisations: the object that
wind” that blows “through prison corridors and impacts the ego and causes it alarm; the object that
cells, and wards of hospitals and ventilated them, is formed by the precise character of the subject’s
and now comes blowing hither as innocent as internal life at the moment.
fleeces” (5 : 460). There is says Ahab, “something Borderline personalities will often try to share a
so unchangeable” and strong about the wind that borderline object with others, a form of breaking
has blown him around the seas of the world. bread in the communion of turbulence. They have
“Would now the wind but had a body; but all an uncanny knack of bringing up in conversation
the things that most exasperate and outrage topics that are designed to evoke maximum emo-
mortal man, all these things are bodiless, but tional impact in the other, often unconsciously
only bodiless as objects, not as agents” (5:461). playing on the other’s situational vulnerability.
The object as agent has a particular kind of In doing so, this object of conversation brings
body-that different sort of thing in itself of self and other into a brief encapsulated merger
which Dante wrote-a primary object that we through shared anguish, although the non border-
know as its effect. line personality will usually rebuff efforts to turn
That “tingling” of which Ahab spoke, or the personal distress into a festival of anguish.
love racked states of Dante and other poets who Recognition of his desire enables this patient to
wrote of their loves as afflictions, is the psycho- consider resistance to psychic change. To work
8 C Bollas Int Forum Psychoanal 5, 1996

this through is to progressively abandon relation edge” one patient told me, referring to a kind of
to the primary object, which occasions a very low level thrill, never knowing whether he would
particular type of anguish. Outbursts could often fall into the maelstrom of intense conflict or pull
be seen as defiant resurrections of an attachment himself back to safety. The edge or the border. A
to the primary object: the affect as thing.5 That line which this personality known only too well, a
kind of truth that is disaster, one which devolves feelable border which he traverses, balancing him-
ordinary life into madness, is tempting indeed to self, coming continuously close to falling, yet often
the borderline. The catastrophic feels enlivening: a able to bring himself back.
strange irony indeed. But if we see the absence Borderline personalities often seek work with
of catastrophe as the empty space following catastrophe services, such as counselling people in
the other’s vanishing-and one need only read earthquakes or natural disasters, serving as volun-
Moby Dick to see Ahab’s profound loneliness and teers in victim support services. They have an
emptiness as he searches the empty seas for his uncanny knack of knowing that such victims are
tormentor-then it is possible to see how the disturbed by the object as agent, by something
borderline perceives non catastrophic ways of impersonal yet familial, something that touches
knowing as self destructive. the core of a self and lives in malignant residence.
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If turmoil is the presence of the object, then the They know what it feels like to believe that one’s
borderline person’s absence of turmoil is also an life is now irreversibly defined by a shocking event
affective representation of the same primary but their unconscious addiction to that shock,
object. their search to revive it in order to gain excitement
Indeed, psychic emptiness is part of the other’s from it-to be close to what is believed to be the
residence within the self, an inevitable outcome of ultimate knowing truth-disables them from
the moving effect of this object upon the self: weaning any other true victim from a life catas-
stirred up and then abandoned. Full of enranged trophe. We know only too well the unconsciously
anguish and then empty. Fullness and emptiness: devoted victim: the man who never recovers from
self states that express contact with tkis object. an automobile accident, the woman who never
Renewed emotional turbulence, when the pri- recovers from a rape, the man who cannot talk
mary object reappears is strangely nourishing. about anything other than an earthquake he was
Feeding off his or her emotional tempests-it is, in. The cathexis of the object is barely hidden: an
after all, what this other provides-searching for object the memory of which stimulates the sensor-
catastrophe from which one takes succour is by no ium and gathers the person into this truth.
means unknown to us; the world’s literature and Borderline sensationalism binds the self as the
art illustrates many examples of the self feeding off ego fragments. It is as if the self failed by an
rage, feeding off jealousy, feeding off loss. These apparent object attacks it violently in mind and
feeds are compensatory nourishments as the comes to pieces in the process; yet paradoxically,
borderline turns the object-as-agent into a feeding coheres the self by shit fits: mental torment is both
occasion in order to transform a traumatic relation the other disrupting the self and the self s grasp on
into something of a nurturing one. The analyst’s a reality. In their most extreme states-usually in
good enough technique is sometimes experienced hospital-borderline patients will actually spit
as strangely depriving as it seems to prevent such shit, and urinate in states of rage, which amongst
feeds and misunderstanding may be sought in other things-and of course this is always over-
order to gorge the self on disturbed states of mind. determined-constitutes attempted recovery
A “vertiginous self’, always on the brink of through libido: a libido turned to the body, con-
catastrophe, the borderline patient awaits cata- tributing to a psycho-sensorial-sensationalism
strophic moments to “milk” them when they supporting the body ego. One is reminded in
arrive. Turmoil is the primary object beckoning these moments of the excretory territorialism of
them to plunge into the depths and it is hard to the psychotic who uses body excretions to mark
resist the temptation. “I know I like to live on the himself, his living space, and his valued objects.
More typically, however, the borderline is covered
’ Kristeva (6) argues that the depressive’s affect is the evocation less
in mental pain and range, using affect for its
of an object, than of /he /hifig, a conjuring of the real. sensational effect, rather than its communicative
Int Forum Psychoanal 5, 1996 Borderline desire 9
function. There is an autistic-somatic function to patient understands that he takes a form of plea-
such use. sure in communing with this object, much of the
It is unfortunate that many of the well inten- seemingly senseless chaos of borderline attributes
tioned therapeutic endeavours designed to get the makes dynamic sense. “I know what you mean”
borderline patient to understand and use bound- said one patient “I have always gotton off on it
aries, to find socially appropriate expressions, and [turmoil], like some kinda sexual thing.”
to adapt to their surroundings often support this However painful it is to the borderline to dis-
person’s false self. Here the false self is a move to cover through analytical interpretation that his
be without affect, to avoid engagements that still coercive emotionality and clinging grievousness
stir the self. The patient may be unusually “con- is the realisation of a wish for a state of mind
tractual”, trying to settle conflicts by redefining that is the object of desire, it eventually enables
agreements and gaining assurances. When I him to see the unconscious gratifications sustained
arrived two minutes late for one person’s session, through his character, ones which when lessened
he spent that hour and the next two enumerating allows the redistribution of pleasure along differ-
agreements between us for what was proper under ent lines.
such a circumstance, trying to get me to sign a Until then, borderline desire seeks what the
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contract, so, that if I did it again, I would be bound patient experiences as his deepest truth. Behind
to receive a just retribution from him. This false the ostensibly offending other (whether analyst or
self, however, is constructed against any feeling. someone else) is the intangible ghost of a profound
As feelings are unconsciously exciting, rousing a familiar “other” who inhabits the self and
hunger, the borderline feels himself sliding into a becomes indistinguishable from it., This desire
relation defined by intense turmoil. So when the does not have to seek the object, it knows that
analyst makes a mistake the patient does not know this intangible force will visit the self regularly
what to do. Has the analyst momentarily offered enough-in life events or in memory-and when
them succour from the primary object ...“ i.e. it feels itself being called to this communion,
Hungry for something? Do you wish to feed off believes it is moving toward some awful truth
this?”-and the borderline is tempted. But he will that is at the very essence of the formation of the
often try to rope in a false self and come to a self. The borderline’s desire is to meet his truth and
contract to stem the slide. to be moved by it.
Psychoanalytic writers from numerous schools
of thought have quite rightly emphasised the
nature of the borderline’s developmental deficien- References
cies. In focusing on borderline desire, I wish to I . Green A. Le travail du negatif. Paris: Les Editions de Minuit. 1993.
2. Bollas C. The shadow of the object: psychoanalysis of the
concentrate on a particular clinical problem for unthought known. London: Free Association Books, 1987.
the analyst. If we see the patient’s desire for 3. Steiner J . Psychic retreats. Pathological organizations in psychotic,
neurotic and borderline patients. London: Routledge, 1993.
turbulence not simply as a decompensation occa- 4. Dante Alighieri. La Vita Nuova (1292-4). Bloomington: Indiana
sioned by internal objects falling from structural University Press, 1962.
place or triggered by blows in reality, but as a 5. Melville H. Moby Dick (1851). New York: W W Norton, 1967.
6. Kristeva J. Black Sun (1987). New York: Colombia University
conjuring of the primary-the self feeding on its Press, 1989.
own anxiety and hate-we may see why he pur-
sues the very disturbance with abandon. When the

Summaries in German and Spanish

Bollas C. Borderline-Sehnsucht Bollas C. El deseo en el paciente borderline
Die Borderlinepersonlichkeit sucht unbewul3t emotionale La personatidad borderline busra inconscientementeemociones
Verwirmngen, weil die damit verbundenen Gefihle die Objekt- turbulentas porque la complejidad afectiva es el estilo de su
beziehung seiner Sehnsucht nachgestaltet. Ob die Storung nun objeto de deseo. Si estos pacientes fueron intrinsicamente
auf einer Storung der Personlichkeitsentwicklung in der Kind- perturbados com niiios, 0, si el mundo objetal primario
heit beruht oder ob die ersten Objektbeziehungen selbst die fue perturbado, ellos conocieron el objeto materno en su
Storung waren - die Betroffenen bewahren in jedem Falle in sich efecto disruptivo. Este efecto entonces, transform0 el estilo
das Bild eines gespaltenen Mutterobjektes. Daran orientiert sich del objeto, y asi buscando turbulencias construyen de hecho
10 C Bollas Int Forum Psychoanal 5, 1996

spater die Objektsuche, so daB die Herstellung von su objeto primario. Como el dolor y la perturbacion de
Venvirrungen eine Aktualisierung des primaren Objektes ist. estos acontecimientos, no es deseado por nadie, el estado
Auch wenn solche Erlebnisse schmerzen, werden sie gesucht, de malestar encontrado por ellos mismos, es inconsciente-
wobei der Zustand der Verzweiflung unbewul3t befriedigend ist. mente gratificante.
Die Betroffenen halten an “Borderlineobjekten” fest, die sie Estas personas cultivan “objetos borderline” 10s cuales
heftig beunruhigen. Meistens verstarken diese Objekte noch evocan estructuras turbulentas de su monte. Dado que 10s
die Unruhe. Dann mag sich der Patient Erlebnissen zuwen- objetos habitualmente tienen un potencial para tales turbu-
den, die ihn auf “gewdhnliche” Weise vemeifelt machen, lencias, asi el borderline podria cambiar 10s hechos desagrad-
und sich dariiber lebendiger fiihlen. Diese Erlebnisse rufen ables y ordinarios de la vida-ambiente contaminado,
eine “toxische” Antwort hervor, die das Wunschobjekt kon- molestias en el trabajo-y transformar estos hechos en
sti tuiert. objetos estimulantes del self. Ellos recogen uns respuesta
Der Borderlinepatient sucht oftmals paradoxenveise das toxica que constituye su objeto de deseo.
MiBverstPndnis mit dem Analytiker, um ihm nahe zu sein. La personalidad borderline en ocasiones encuentra
Wenn er erlebt, daD er den Analytiker verwirren oder be- momentos de desavenencia con el psicoanalista, paradojica-
driickt machen kann, macht er die Erfahrung, daD sie beide mento suficiente, en el sentido de sentirse cerrado en la clinica.
seine urspriingliche Objekterfahrung teilen. Si el siente que el analista esta enfadado o irritado, el paciente
Indem man dem Patienten immer wieder seinen unbe- siente que il y el analista estan compartiendo juntos una
wuDten Wunsch nach dem Analytiker deutet, kann man experiencia primaria. Por la persistencia en la interpretacibn
seine Pathologie nachhaltig dekonstruieren und ihm helfen, del caracter inconsciente del deseo del paciente el analista
die komplexe Dynarnik zu verstehen, die ihn immer wieder puedo efectivamente deconstruir la patologia del analizando
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mit sich selbst und vor allem mit anderen in Schwierigkeiten atacando y ayudando a1 paciente a comprender la cornpleja
bringt. dinamica que mantiene siempre con su persona en un agudo
conflicta consigo mismo y que le deja solo frente a 10s otros.