How to Talk to a Borderline by Joan Lachkar

How to Talk to a Borderline Reviews

• 
  Gabriel Conroy

  Lachkar offers an "informative" discussion of the various types of Borderline Personality Disorder [BPD]. This book is directed primarily at therapists and other mental health professionals who may find themselves treating BPD patients.
  
  I use scare quotes around "informative" above because I (as a layperson, non mental health professional) don't know enough to assess how much of what Lachkar says is based on "the state of accepted knowledge" and how much is based on Lachkar's own theoretical commitments. In this book, you'll find a lot of discussion of BPD sufferers experiencing some complication of some sort with "the mother bond." You'll also find reconstituted dialogues between a therapist and their patient, where the therapist says something like, "I see there are holes in your pants. Those holes represent the holes in your own identity that are to painful for you to acknowledge," followed by the patient/client acknowledging the truth of that statement and (somehow) one more step closer to a workable recovery. I (again, admittedly a layperson) suspect there are different approaches.
  
  One additional criticism I have is that Lachkar seems to recommit the same mistake that other popular writers (and for all I know, perhaps most mental health professionals) about BPD seem to commit. She seems to assume that one simply has BPD or doesn't. There seem to be very few instances of doubt whether a given patient has BPD. I use the modal "seem" in this paragraph because, again, I'm not a mental health professional. But it seems to me reasonable, at least along some margin, that BPD, or any "personality disorder," may be a question of where one fits along some spectrum rather than a question of "having (or being) borderline" or not.