Book Review: Borderline Bodies:  Affect Regulation Theory for Personality Disorders

“The body,” says Clara Mucci, “is the essential go-between in the relationship between the self and other.” In personality disorders, this relationship between the self and the other is especially troubled. However, this “other” can be the body itself. Mucci describes psychosomatic disorders as an outcome of the “problematic junction between mind and body.” The body can also act as an imprinting device in which earlier generations transmit their trauma onto us. In her new book, Borderline Bodies: Affect Regulation Theory for Personality Disorders, Mucci places the body at the center of treatment, viewing it both as the recipient of trauma and the internalized persecutor, inflicting further harm. “It is likely that when there is insecure or disorganized attachment in the first, traumatized generation, the second and third generations of survivors might develop personality disorders when vulnerability and even epigenetic factors combine with other environmental factors,” writes Mucci. Interpersonal traumatization can exist on three levels. We can have early relational trauma, maltreatment, abuse, and identification with the aggressor, and we can have massive and intergenerational trauma. Mucci explains, “The development of a personality disorder, characterized by a series of difficulties and relational dysfunctions between self and other and evident in the exchanges between patient and therapist in clinical work, finds its origin in developmental deficits ...
Source: Psych Central - Category: Psychiatry Authors: Tags: Book Reviews Disorders Family General Genetics Memory and Perception Parenting Personality Psychology Psychotherapy Relationships & Love Trauma Treatment Affect Regulation Theory for Personality Disorders Body books on somati Source Type: news