Staff countertransference reactions in the hospital treatment of borderline patients

The aim of this paper is to elucidate a systematic framework for understanding the nature of the borderline patient's reactions to the hospital milieu and for comprehending the responses of hospital staff to such patients. The theory and principles of the therapeutic milieu or milieu therapy are not the focus of this paper; rather, the unique ways in which borderline patients create their own reality and interact with that reality are examined. The borderline patients considered here constitute a group who present severe character pathology, including pronounced distortions in reality testing, marked paranoid trends, minimal distinction between self and others, and multiple hospitalizations that have proven ineffectual. Overall, these patients are functioning at a level more regressed than most borderline patients and their histories often reveal many psychotic episodes. Because of their severe psychopathology, long-term intensive treatment in a hospital setting, termed "reconstructive hospital treatment" by Zee (1975), is indicated. The goal of such treatment is to augment the patient's failing ego functioning, to help the patient develop constructive alternatives for dealing with conflict, and to aid the patient develop constructive alternatives for dealing with conflict, and to aid the patient in embarking upon a psychoanalytically oriented exploration of his highly conflicted object relations. Without the use of the hospital as a treatment modality these patients tend to continue in a downward spiral of destructive relationships. These remarks, therefore, are addressed to the effect severely ill borderline patients have upon the hospital milieu and to the impact of the milieu upon them.