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    Understanding The Borderline Mother Helping Her CH

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    emanuelabianca
    This document summarizes a book that examines how mothers with borderline personality disorder raise their children and influence their lives. It describes four types of borderline mothers - the Waif, the Hermit, the Queen, and the Witch - and discusses the behavioral patterns often seen in their children. It also provides guidance for adult children of borderline mothers on establishing boundaries. However, the summary notes that the book is loosely organized and lacks data to support its assertions, and it does not explain how adult children would know their mother had a borderline personality disorder diagnosis.

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    Understanding The Borderline Mother Helping Her CH

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    emanuelabianca
    524 views4 pages
    This document summarizes a book that examines how mothers with borderline personality disorder raise their children and influence their lives. It describes four types of borderline mothers - the Waif, the Hermit, the Queen, and the Witch - and discusses the behavioral patterns often seen in their children. It also provides guidance for adult children of borderline mothers on establishing boundaries. However, the summary notes that the book is loosely organized and lacks data to support its assertions, and it does not explain how adult children would know their mother had a borderline personality disorder diagnosis.

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    Understanding the Borderline Mother Helping Her Ch

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    This document summarizes a book that examines how mothers with borderline personality disorder raise their children and influence their lives. It describes four types of borderline mothers - the Waif, the Hermit, the Queen, and the Witch - and discusses the behavioral patterns often seen in their children. It also provides guidance for adult children of borderline mothers on establishing boundaries. However, the summary notes that the book is loosely organized and lacks data to support its assertions, and it does not explain how adult children would know their mother had a borderline personality disorder diagnosis.

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    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    524 views4 pages

    Understanding The Borderline Mother Helping Her CH

    Uploaded by

    emanuelabianca
    This document summarizes a book that examines how mothers with borderline personality disorder raise their children and influence their lives. It describes four types of borderline mothers - the Waif, the Hermit, the Queen, and the Witch - and discusses the behavioral patterns often seen in their children. It also provides guidance for adult children of borderline mothers on establishing boundaries. However, the summary notes that the book is loosely organized and lacks data to support its assertions, and it does not explain how adult children would know their mother had a borderline personality disorder diagnosis.

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    The document discusses a book that describes different types of borderline mothers and provides recommendations for adult children of borderline mothers.

    The book describes four main types of borderline mothers - the Waif, the Hermit, the Queen, and the Witch.

    The author recommends that adult children of Waif mothers relinquish trying to save their mother and anger, allow Hermit mothers to make their own decisions, identify boundaries without negative attribution for Queen mothers, and create distance and disengage from conflict for Witch mothers.

    See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.

    net/publication/324853044

    Understanding the Borderline Mother: Helping Her Children Transcend the


    Intense, Unpredictable, and Volatile Relationship

    Article  in  American Journal of Psychotherapy · July 2001


    DOI: 10.1176/appi.psychotherapy.2001.55.3.444

    CITATIONS READS

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    Charles M Borduin Scott Ronis


    University of Missouri University of New Brunswick
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    AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PSYCHOTHERAPY

    While it is legitimate to criticize poor clinical practice and to work in a way


    that humanizes the client, it is dangerous to provide misinformation and to use
    scare tactics that can limit the ability of parents to make informed choices for
    themselves.
    The second part of the book explains Nylund's approach to working with the
    kind of children who are identified as having ADHD. With the exception of the
    above-mentioned deconstructing questions, his approach can stand independently
    of his politicized anti-ADHD beliefs.
    Nylund's therapy is based on the principles of narrative therapy. He describes
    a five-step process that he dubs the SMART approach, which is an acronym for
    Separating the problem from the child, Mapping the influence of ADHD,
    Attending to exceptions, Reclaiming special abilities, and Telling and celebrating
    the new story. Nylund guides the reader through a process that describes how to
    help children identify with their strengths rather than with their deficits, choose
    what they can do to master the challenges that they face, become instrumental in
    making changes, celebrate their special talents, and feel pride for who they are and
    what they have accomplished, to the point at which the diagnosis is an insignifi-
    cant part of such children's identity. He also describes how to engage teachers in
    this process.
    Most of the clinical part of the book reveals a very compassionate, engaging,
    and innovative approach to working with these children, their parents, and their
    teachers. In reading Nylund's verbal give-and-takes with his clients, one can easily
    imagine how children would appreciate and respond to this approach, and benefit
    from it. There is actually much to learn from the clinical portion of this book.
    Then, after a satisfying foray into the clinical realm, Nylund returns to his
    polemics, as if he really needed them to justify his clinical ideas.
    Londonderry, NH EDWARD H. JACOBS, PH.D.

    CHRISTINE A. LAWSON: Understanding the Borderline Mother: Helping H


    Children Transcend the Intense, Unpredictable, and Volatile Relations
    Jason Aronson, Northvale, NJ, 2000, 330, pp., $45.00, ISBN: 0-7657¬
    0288-6.
    Most of the extant literature on borderline personality disorder focuses on
    patients' interactions with other adults and not with their own children. In
    Understanding the Borderline Mother, Christine A. Lawson examines how mothe
    with borderline personality disorder raise their children and influence their lives.
    The book, intended for the adult children of "borderline" mothers and for their
    therapists, attempts to fill an important gap in the clinical literature.
    The book consists of 13 chapters that seem to be organized into three major
    sections, although the author does not present specific section headings. The first
    section (6 chapters) presents a typology of borderline mothers derived from
    Lawson's clinical experience. Each type is described using examples of characters
    from classic fairy tales, including Lewis Carroll's Alice s Adventure in Wonderland
    444
    Book Reviews

    and L. Frank Baum's The Wizard ofOz. The first type of mother, the Waif, is said
    to feel victimized and depressed; as a mother, the Waif has difficulty caring for her
    children and may be alternately neglectful and overindulgent of their emotional
    and physical needs. The second type, the Hermit, is described as fearful of others,
    yet wanting to belong; her parenting style is possessive and over controlling. The
    third type, the Queen, lacks empathy and is critical of others; as a mother, she is
    more concerned with her own needs for attention than with those of her children.
    The last type, the Witch, is described as sadistically evil and as having an
    authoritarian parenting style in which she expresses unpredictable rage toward her
    children.
    In the second section (chapters 7 and 8), Lawson examines three common
    behavioral patterns in children of borderline mothers (regardless of type). "All-
    good children" are trained to rescue and protect their mothers and may function
    as "little therapists" in their families; in adulthood, such children are said to be at
    risk for depressive and anxiety disorders but do not develop borderline person-
    ality disorder because only the idealized parts of the mother are projected onto the
    child. In contrast, "no-good children" unconsciously remind the mother of a
    hated or loved part of herself and are at risk for developing borderline personality
    disorder in adulthood. A third group characterized as "lost children" are said to
    lack a sense of control over their lives and are strongly defended against attach-
    ment; these children have difficulty being reliable, consistent, or dependable in
    adulthood. Lawson also describes four types of fathers who marry borderline
    mothers: the Frog-Prince, an underdog who, the Waif hopes, will rescue her from
    misery; the Huntsman, who protects the Hermit from danger and provides the
    stability she needs; the King, a high-profile partner who fulfills the Queen's
    insatiable needs for status and admiration; and the Fisherman, who relinquishes
    his will to the Witch and mistakes her aggression for courage. All of these types
    of fathers are described as passive and neglectful toward their children and fail to
    buffer them from emotional harm.
    The final section of the book (chapters 9 through 13) offers guidance to adult
    children of borderline mothers. The author suggests that adult children of Waif
    mothers relinquish trying to save their mother's life and the anger that can destroy
    their own lives. For adult children of Hermit mothers, the author recommends
    allowing their mother to make her own decisions about life without sacrificing
    their own lives, their sanity, or their well-being in order to protect her. Lawson
    suggests that adult children of Queen mothers should identify their boundaries
    without attributing negative motivation to their mother's behavior. For adult
    children of Witch mothers, the author recommends creating distance in the
    relationship and disengaging from conflict as soon as it erupts. In general, Lawson
    recommends that adult children establish and maintain boundaries with their
    borderline mothers while responding to them with love and concern. She also
    recommends therapy for adult children to create a more comfortable relationship
    with their borderline mothers.
    445
    A M E R I C A N J O U R N A L O F PSYCHOTHERAPY

    The main contribution of this book rests with the author's attempt to describe
    how borderline personality disorder can influence parenting and child develop-
    ment. The main weaknesses of the book are that it is loosely organized and devoid
    of any data to support the author's assertions. It is also worth noting that while the
    book is written primarily for adult children of mothers with a diagnosis of
    borderline personality disorder, the author never explains how adult children
    would know that their mother had actually received such a diagnosis. In many
    respects, Understanding the Borderline Mother seems to fall into a long line o
    blame-your-parent books and fails to acknowledge the multitude of influences
    besides parenting on behavior and emotions. Although this book may be of
    interest to individuals who wish to learn about some of the family dynamics
    related to borderline personality disorder, it is difficult to recommend this book
    as a resource for most therapists.
    Columbia, MO CHARLES M. BORDUIN, PH.D.
    SCOTT T. RONIS, B.A.

    DANIEL A. BOCHNER: The Therapist's Use of Self in Family Therapy. Jason


    Aronson, Northvale, NJ, 2000, 484 pp., $60.00, ISBN: 0-7657-0248-7.
    Countertransference (CT) is viewed by psychodynamic therapists as an obstruc-
    tion to understanding the patient. Family therapy has paid little attention to it. The
    Therapists' Use of Self in Family Therapy, Bochner offers a metapsychology of th
    use of self. He does so by arguing that the therapist's emotional response to the
    patient's CT brings him or her into the family system and enhances an under-
    standing of it. His definition of CT follows that of Winnicott who sees CT as due
    to therapist's unresolved conflicts or an unconscious aspect of the therapist's
    personality or as emotions that are a reaction to the patient. CT is viewed as
    informative and useful as well as problematical. Projective identification, as
    described by Kernberg, is said to be the glue of relationships and an important
    factor in CT. It connects intrapsychic dynamics to interpersonal behaviors.
    Bochner uses projective identification to connect intrapsychic and interpersonal
    dynamics. In family therapy, activity and self-disclosure are an inevitable conse-
    quence of the therapist's CT.
    Bochner, a clinical psychologist who does individual, family and group
    therapy, offers a model of treatment that attempts to integrate the psychodynamic
    and interpersonal. He calls it a "relational systems model" (RSM).
    Following an introduction, the author uses two chapters to review the use of
    self in individual and in family therapy. In his fourth chapter, Bochner reviews the
    intersection between intrapsychic and dyadic systems in groups and families.
    Systems theorists disavowed psychoanalytic concepts. In place of insight, methods
    and action became paramount. All of this leads up to his sixth chapter, the
    metapsychology of the RSM and a seventh on the therapist's use of self. In the
    seventh chapter he gives vignettes from nine different family therapists to dem-
    onstrate how the interface between the family and therapist can be understood by
    446

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