The Borderline Struggle: Humanizing Women with BPD

• In Event: 2320 - Section on Disability in Society Refereed Roundtables (1 hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: Table 1 Section on Disability in Society Refereed Roundtables

Abstract

Seventy-five percent of people diagnosed with borderline personality disorder (BPD) are women; however, these women have only infrequently represented how they experience BPD. The question of medical discrimination of women with BPD has been debated by psychoanalysts such as Phyllis Chesler, Clare Shaw and Jacqueline Gunn as well as disability studies scholars such as Alison Kafer, Katie Aubrecht, and Bradley Lewis. However, these scholars have not adequately addressed how to give women with BPD a voice, as historically the embodied knowledge, experiences, and emotional make-up of women with BPD are often presented as subordinate to the greater interpreting scientific knowledge of the “expert.” My paper provides a framework of how to use ethnographic fiction, drawing from the works of Merri Lisa Johnson, Kathleen Stewart, Claudia Rankine, and Charlotte Gilman, as a way for women with BPD to express themselves. I interviewed three women with BPD and their narratives were transformed into vignettes using techniques from Matt Jacobson and Soren Larsen who theorize about ethnographic fiction. I used ethnographic fiction because its evocative writing is different from the standard academic ethnography. Ethnographic fiction’s goal is to produce an experience for the reader instead of documenting facts. My hope of using ethnographic fiction was to shine light onto the medical discrimination and erasure of women with BPD. Salient themes from the vignettes were embodiment, trauma, and internal turmoil, including self-hatred and suicidiality. In conclusion, my paper humanizes and repoliticizes women with BPD in a way that previous literature has not.

Author

• Jennie Lambert