Neustadter, ES;
Fotopoulou, A;
Steinfeld, M;
Fineberg, SK;
(2021)
Mentalization and embodied selfhood in borderline personality disorder.
Journal of Consciousness Studies
, 28
(3-4)
pp. 126-157.
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Abstract
Aberrations of self-experience are considered a core feature of borderline personality disorder (BPD). While prominent aetiol-ogical accounts of BPD, such as the mentalization-based approach, appeal to the developmental constitution of self in early infant–care-giver environments, they often rely on a conception of self that is not explicitly articulated. Moreover, self-experience in BPD is often theorized at the level of narrative identity, thus minimizing the role of embodied experience. In this article, we present the hypothesis that disordered self and interpersonal functioning in BPD result, in part, from impairments in ‘embodied mentalization’ that manifest founda-tionally as alterations in minimal embodied selfhood, i.e. the first-person experience of being an individuated embodied subject. This account of BPD, which engages early intersubjective experiences, has the potential to integrate phenomenological, developmental, and symptomatic findings in BPD, and is consistent with contemporary theories of brain function.
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