The relatedness of borderline and schizophrenic disorders

This article is an editor's introduction to the theme of a special issue of the Schizophrenia Bulletin devoted to borderline conditions. The editor reviews various approaches to defining borderline patients and concludes that these descriptive efforts are now showing considerable consensus. Questions remain, however, about whether borderline patients constitute a diagnostic category that is unrelated to schizophrenia or some other established diagnostic group. The historical origins of these questions are briefly reviewed, and then the multiple interpretations given to the current research efforts to answer them are described.