[Neurotic symptoms of borderline patients: a case review study]

The author investigated neurotic symptoms of borderline patients by reviewing the clinical charts of twenty-six patients of longer than one year treatment period (8 men, 18 women; 23 patients with DSM III-R borderline personality disorder (BPD), 14 with schizotypal personality disorder (SPD), (11 BPD-SPD overlaps); age at the first contact: mean = 24.3 y. o., SD = 6.7 y. o.; treatment period: mean = 51 months, SD = 35 months). The diagnoses of the comorbid neurotic disorders were obsessive compulsive disorder: 5 cases (19% (BPD: 22%, SPD: 7%)), somatoform disorder: 5 (19% (BPD: 22%, SPD: 21%)), panic disorder: 4 (15% (BPD: 17%, SPD: 14%)), social phobia: 2 (8% (BPD: 9%, SPD: 7%)), dissociative disorder: 2 (8% (BPD: 9%, SPD: 0%)), and generalized anxiety disorder: 1 (4% (BPD: 4%, SPD: 7%)). The neurotic symptoms identified in the charts of the subjects were as follows; symptoms of social phobia: 11 cases (42% (BPD: 43%, SPD: 43%)) including 6 with anthropophobic symptoms (23% (BPD: 26%, SPD: 36%)), obsessive compulsive symptoms and diffuse and floating anxiety: 9 (35% (BPD: 39%, SPD: 38%)), panic attacks: 8 (31% (BPD: 35%, SPD: 36%)), conversion symptoms: 7 (27% (BPD: 30%, SPD: 21%)), dissociative episodes: 6 (23% (BPD: 26%, SPD: 7%)), depersonalization: 5 (19% (BPD: 22%, SPD: 14%)), multiple apprehensive expectations: 4 (15% (BPD: 17%, SPD: 14%)), derealization: 3 (12% (BPD: 13%, SPD: 14%)), hyperventilation attacks: 3 (12% (BPD: 13%, SPD: 7%)), and somatization: 1 (4% (BPD: 4%, SPD: 7%)). In short, 54% (BPD: 61%, SPD: 43%) of the subjects had comorbid neurotic disorders, and 92% (BPD: 91%, SPD: 93%) reported at least one, and 54% (BPD: 61%, SPD: 50%), more than two kinds of neurotic symptoms, though no specific symptom correlating with BPD or SPD diagnosis was found. These findings suggest that neurotic symptoms and neurotic disorders cannot be ignored as peripheral in the borderline symptomatology. By analyzing in detail the neurotic experiences, the author pointed out as their characteristics, ego syntonicity, deterioration of reality sense and symptomatic polymorphism, ambiguity and multiplicity (panneurosis). In the symptoms the author observed signs of defective personality functioning such as disavowal of reality, low anxiety tolerance, various forms of identity disturbances. The findings counted above, suggest that the borderline neurotic symptoms are more severe in nature than those of neurotics, and could be situated in between neurotic and psychotic levels of symptomatic severity. The results indicate that the neurotic experiences of borderline patients are, as a whole, deeply ingrained in the borderline psychopathology.