Karen Horney's "resigned person" heralds DSM-III-R's borderline personality disorder

It is shown here that what Karen Horney called the resignation solution to the problem of basic anxiety leads to psychopathology very similar to DSM-III-R's borderline personality disorder (BPD). Both the "resigned person" and the borderline personality show instability of self-image, social relationships, and mood, and live out the associated deficits with similar styles. While not specifically using the term "splitting", Horney showed how alternating expansive and self-effacing trends can coexist in the resigned person, and how these oscillations in self-other-world constitution influence the resigned person's behavior in a way similar to borderline splitting. Horney's descriptive and psychodynamic analysis of the resignation phenomenon elaborates and gives additional credibility to DSM-III-R's BPD as a diagnostic category.