Armed with the hasty warning that he was not what he seemed, I met a man at a party who immediately launched into a maudlin tirade against himself for a whole raft of failings, only to conclude with glittering eyes and upraised palms that he must be the very most awful person in the entire world and perhaps even the Galaxy..
and of all Time.
…which goes to show that there is no such thing as an inferiority complex, only one end of something that has a secret life, that expresses itself through the cracks given enough stress or margaritas.
One of the weird things that happens in the borderlands of the soul is that even though you can see the terrain in front of you it may not be all that obvious which side of the frontier you are on.
This is why we talk about ‘sado-masochism’ rather than one or the other, because it’s largely a question of which is uppermost in consciousness at the time and how its secret wrestling partner gets the occasional look in.
The rule seems to be that wherever you have an excess of something its opposite is close at hand and liable to intervene. The ancient Greeks called it ‘Enantiodromia’, the river that flows back on itself, a principle of Equilibrium that tends towards balance, either over time or by playing an opposing hand.
Which is why paranoia and extreme positions tend to team up.
The borderline personality mostly holds it together for as long as they are allowed to determine which side of the frontier y’all are on. Disagree, or let them run their mouth for a bit and you will soon find whatever you think is wrong and contemptible.
Kids get stuck at this ‘symbiotic’ stage of development if they are discouraged from establishing any foothold in their own sense of ‘I’. When borders with Mum are vague or disputed and have to be continuously fought over, a pattern of needing to create dramas for the sake of one’s own ontological security gets carried forward into adult life. It expresses itself there as the compulsion to denigrate, and by the generation of intolerant moods to act as glue for a barely cohering identity.
”The borderline character resorts to behaviors which evoke strong affects which they identify with, thereby maintaining a sense of self.” K+M Woods.
‘The Three Snake Leaves’ is a story from Grimm’s that speaks to the tangle of identities and the extreme solutions associated with the borderline personality.
A poor young man takes leave of a father to whom he feels a burden and goes out into the world where he is whirled up to the king’s right hand by defeating the Enemy of the Empire. He is offered the hand of the Princess in marriage, but she has a strange pre-nuptual request. In the event of either death the remaining spouse will be buried as well…
The Prince agrees and, as you can guess, she ups and dies almost immediately. Before you can blink he’s taken down to the royal vault and sealed in.
A snake wriggles through a hole in the wall and approaches the corpse. He draws his sword and cuts it in pieces. Another snake appears with three green leaves in it’s mouth. It places the leaves on the dead snake’s wounds and it returns to life. The Prince then puts the leaves on the Princess with the same result.
Unfortunately, the Princess is not entirely grateful and drowns her savior in favor of the Captain of the Guard, but the Prince’s faithful servant finds his body and knows where the leaves are kept…
The Princess gets killed according to the rules of poetic justice and is scuttled at sea where she drowns.
Both Prince and Princess agree to be co-dependently tied to one another’s fate, yet in the face of that arrangement and perhaps because of it, they then manage to murder each other within two brief pages.
The idealized vision of , ‘I can’t live without you,’ is attended in short order by a quite opposite attitude that happily and cold bloodedly bumps off the beloved on some whimsical pretext.. It seems like a contradiction but what both extremes have in common is primal intensity, a cocktail of visceral emotion which momentarily reanimates the shackled soul…
for now.
Trump appears to be a sadistic bully and his bluster gets a lot of attention because it kicks up so much dust, but more chilling is the even less conscious masochism played out with international dictators. The involvement with Russia is scary not just because of financial corruption and national security issues but because Trump’s own unconscious masochism compels him into a subservient role with someone who is only too happy to oblige.
its worse than greed, covering up election meddling or the prospect of pee tapes.
its about the need to be debased.
The errand boy delegation of Republican Senators sent to meet with Ambassador Kislyak in Moscow on their own Independence day holiday served no stated diplomatic purpose whatsoever. There wasn’t even any simple stuff such as putting forward items for an agenda. Their message was in their folded hands, their supplication that they ‘hoped the coming summit would be big’, like kiddies anticipating birthday cake served up by a mom that mostly doesn’t like you.
To have pre-summit talks devoid of any content whatsoever except the hope for their bigness suggests a purpose other than rational discussion or shifty corruption. Its communication is at the level of gesture, like the deferential inconvenience of standing when your superior enters the room. We’ll put ourselves out on our own Independence Day, coming to you with nothing but hope for bigness in our unworthy hearts. Kislyak’s post meeting comment was, ”The main thing is that our guests traveled here in order to talk..’ Duma member present Vyacheslav Nikonov was incredulous, ‘this was one of the easiest meetings of my life.’
But there is no real meeting if you are stuck in borderline symbiosis and have not yet formed the nucleus of mine and thine or I and thou. The ‘meeting’ with chairman Kim was not about nukes but about giving credence and legitimacy to any genocidal impulses against your own people you might have by patting good ol’ Kim on the back like a long lost mate and praising him with party favors.
The resolution of the Prince and Princess’ sadomasochistic arrangement comes from outside their situation and when things seem most dire. The snake, as transformative Hermes or life giving Nature herself, appears with the power to redeem the situation through re-membering, a putting back together of that which has been killed off and breathing life into the humbling tension of inner opposites and complexities that go with being able to have thoughts and feelings of your own. Neither protagonist is able to integrate it without the help of the trusty servant, the healthy indigenous self who revives the Prince after his beloved has sadistically drowned him.
For all the drama of the borderline scenario, there is a ray of hope. By its very nature it is prone to turn into its opposite. The life bringing snake is unscripted, appears autonomously and has the magical ability to breath new life into stale situations.
The living death of being joined at the hip with others gets interrupted by this Adversary, since it is often in adversity that you find out what you are made of, where sufficient angst provokes a deeper awareness, a truer voice, a new feeling of connection.
Borderline people are like catalysts in chemical experiments. They remain unchanged but can speed growth up in others. The attack on the status of women, children and minorities in the Trump administration has resulted in the most incredible outpouring of solidarity, dignity and raising of consciousness. The Women’s marches, DACA debacle, the MeToo movement and the public outcry over child internment and Roe v Wade does more than affect the polls. It is a tide of collective compassion and outrage that has the power to reshape the face of a nation.
