Debbané, M;
Nielsen, P;
(2024)
Borderline personality disorder and therapeutic communication: An approach based on mentalization.
Information Psychiatrique
, 100
(2)
pp. 99-106.
10.1684/ipe.2024.2683.
Preview |
Text
Article Evolution Psychiatrique_FINAL.pdf - Accepted Version Download (233kB) | Preview |
Abstract
Borderline personality disorder (BPD) has long represented a clinical challenge for all psychotherapeutic schools. The innovations proposed by specialized psychotherapeutic approaches point to the possibility of therapeutic success, at least in terms of reducing the expression of suicidality, depression, self-damaging behaviors, and the number of diagnostic symptoms. In this article, we will attempt to highlight the constituent elements of therapeutic communication in the BPD treatment. To do so, we employ the framework of mentalization-based therapies (MBT), a treatment that has demonstrated its effectiveness in the psychotherapeutic management of BPD. After a brief historical review of the use of the term “mentalization” in the scientific literature, we define mentalization as an essentially imaginative and inferential process involving different components in the reading of mental states. Clinicians use their ability to mentalize to initiate therapeutic communication, reflecting their understanding of the patient’s experience. We describe the clinical cues for initiating a therapeutic process, in particular the axes of mentalization, management of emotional activation, and joint attention to the subject of mental states. We describe how this process promotes epistemic trust, i.e., the ability to attribute trust to a source of information, to evaluate the personal relevance of the information, and to generalize the learning episode in the social context. This leads us to consider three systems of therapeutic communication within treatment for BPD.
Archive Staff Only
 |
View Item |
