Inside the Little Plastic Castle

Second of several posts about the SDS@OSU Virtual Conference held the first weekend in April.

Communicating and Framing Diagnosis and Difference

Rachel Larrowe, a DePaul University MA student, presented a fascinating paper on "BPD, CPTSD, and Identity: the Discursive Construction of Diagnostic Possibilities." She deployed a very close reading of how the two conditions are defined which raised the following issues:

• There’s significant overlap in diagnostic criteria for Borderline Personality Disorder and Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. C-PTSD was considered and excluded from the most recent US diagnostic/billing/research tool, the DSM-5, while it is part of the rest-of-the-world tool ICD-10.
• People DXed with BPD often have terrible, traumatic childhoods.
• Quoting her presentation: ‌What if so-called disordered personalities are the psychological consequences of childhood abuse? What if trauma doesn’t always look how the medical establishment and the media have taught us to expect? How can a disorder be post-traumatic if a child never experiences a time pre-trauma?
• There’s gender trouble here: CPTSD is more commonly DXed in men, BPD in women. CPTSD is partly defined by events people experience, while BPD is defined by how people are. Some of the behaviors unique to BPD, such as ‌Individuals with borderline personality disorder make frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment overlap with how women are defined as needy and "too much."
• What if we could accommodate these needs? Her example: if I’m doubting my place in a relationship, could it be okay for me to text someone "I’m afraid you’re hating me right now" and they could reply with "🧡👍 all clear" and we’d all be good?

ETA: 23 Apr 2020, correct researcher's name and degree