Borderline personlighedsforstyrrelse

Sammanfattning: This is a feminist study of the diagnosis 'borderline personality disorder' as a feminized shadow of an almost unquestionable idea in the contemporary Western democracies: The free individual. Based on qualitative interviews with patients with borderline personality disorder and psy-workers, this study provides an understanding of borderline personality disorder as both a technology of government, and a technology of the self, which is produced in the power relations between patient and employee, and between discourse and body. The study focuses on how the diagnosis influences the way subjects come into being and how they understand themselves and each other. It shows that the diagnosis is an ambiguous recognition of the patient, because it recognizes her by labeling her as disordered. Drawing on affect theory the study shows how affective economies are in use when establishing the boundaries between the normative, rational individual, and the disordered Other. It reveals how negotiations of these boundaries are closely linked to hierarchical gendered dichotomies that are imbedded both in the psy-institutions, but also on a more general scale in a Western liberal discourse. These discursive and affective processes contributes to individualize social problems. Finally, the study therefore suggests, alternative confirmative communities as a counterstrategy.