Dissociation in Borderline Personality Disorder

Dissociation has been presented as a process that provides protective mental containment and detachment from overwhelming experiences, and even it is proposed as physical analgesia for intensely severe experiences, usually of a traumatic or stressful nature. Dissociation is identified as the loss of control or awareness of cognitive and physical processes, which are normally controlled or involved in conscious awareness processes, which are manifested by interruption of identity, thought, memory, emotion, perception, and consciousness. A notable body of empirical and clinical studies has indicated significant associations have been found between borderline personality disorder (BPD) and both exposure to psychological trauma and dissociative experiences, and the exacerbated role of dissociative symptoms in the symptomatology of BPD. In addition, it has been indicated that dissociation is not specifically a core characteristic symptom of BPD, but rather may highlight the existence of dissociation in a continuum of severity in other psychiatric issues such as post-traumatic stress disorder, substance use disorder, and dissociative disorders. Experienced dissociative symptoms reported in individuals with BPD are passive, breakdown phenomena that reflect the episodic nature of disruptions in BPD patient’s proneness, poor-integrated/disintegrated, perceptual/neurocognitive/affective frame reference. Experimental findings have indicated a significant association between state and trait dissociation and BPD severity and severity of comorbid mental health symptoms.