[Bordeline states and their significance in psychiatry]

The authors critically analyse the tendency of conceptualizing some difficult to classify psycho-pathological states, the symptoms and clinical dynamics of which would be characteristic, in a psycho-analytical interpretation, to a nosologically distinct category termed "bordeline states". The authors' orientation and clinical observations related to the data in the literature lead to the specification of those situations in which this term can be used in the psychiatric diagnosis, preferably under its original lexical form and with the specification of the substantiating concept. Due to the looseness and ununitary interpretation of the "bordeline states" situations, for the clinical cases that correspond to the diagnostic criteri, it is prefered the term of psychopathy, which although controversial, has a more statutory use in psychiatry.