For many, American culture has lost contact with the past and remains unconnected to the future. The flooding of technical advancement and information that swept over the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, much of it involving computers, PDAs, cell phones, and so on, often requires greater individual commitment to solitary study and practice, thus sacrificing opportunities for real social interaction. Indeed, the preoccupation—some would say obsession—with computers and other digital gadgetry, especially among the young in what is commonly called “social media” (Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, YouTube, etc.), may be resulting ironically in more self-absorption and less physical interaction; texting, blogging, posting, and tweeting all avoid eye contact. Increasing divorce rates, expanding use of day care, and greater geographical mobility have all contributed to a society that lacks constancy and reliability. Personal, intimate, lasting relationships become difficult or even impossible to achieve, and deep-seated loneliness, self-absorption, emptiness, anxiety, depression, and loss of self-esteem ensue.

The borderline syndrome represents a pathological response to these stresses. Without outside sources of stability and validation of worthiness, borderline symptoms of black-and-white thinking, self-destructiveness, extreme mood changes, impulsivity, poor relationships, impaired sense of identity, and anger become understandable reactions to our culture’s tensions. Borderline traits, which may be present to some extent in most people, are being elicited—perhaps even bred—on a wide scale by the prevailing social conditions. New York Times writer Louis Sass put it this way:

Each culture probably needs its own scapegoats as expressions of society’s ills. Just as the hysterics of Freud’s day exemplified the sexual repression of that era, the borderline, whose identity is split into many pieces, represents the fracturing of stable units in our society.²

Though conventional wisdom presumes that borderline pathology has increased over the last few decades, some psychiatrists believe that the symptoms were just as common early in the twentieth century. They claim that the change is not in the prevalence of the disorder, but in the fact that it is now officially identified and defined, and so merely diagnosed more frequently. Even some of Freud’s early cases, scrutinized in the light of current criteria, might be diagnosed today as borderline personalities.

This possibility, however, by no means diminishes the importance of the growing number of borderline patients who are ending up in psychiatrists’ offices and of the growing recognition of borderline characteristics in the general population. In fact, the major reason why it has been identified and covered so widely in the clinical literature is its prevalence in both therapeutic settings and the general culture.

The Breakdown of Structure: A Fragmented Society

Few would dispute the notion that society has become more fragmented since the end of World War II. Family structures in place for decades—the nuclear family, extended family, one-wage-earner households, geographical stability—have been replaced by a wide assortment of patterns, movements, and trends. Divorce rates have soared. Drug and alcohol abuse and child neglect and abuse have skyrocketed. Crime, terrorism, and political assassination have become widespread, at times almost commonplace. Periods of economic uncertainty, exemplified in roller-coaster boom-and-bust scenarios, have become the rule, not the exception.

Some of these changes may be related to society’s failure to achieve a kind of “social rapprochement.” As noted in chapter 3, during the separation-individuation phase, the infant ventures cautiously away from mother but returns to her reassuring warmth, familiarity, and acceptance. Disruption of this rapprochement cycle often results in a lack of trust, disturbed relationships, emptiness, anxiety, and an uncertain self-image—characteristics that make up the borderline syndrome. Similarly, it may be seen that contemporary culture interferes with a healthy “social rapprochement” by obstructing access to comforting anchors. At no time has this disruption been more evident than in the first decade of the twenty-first century, racked as it has been by economic collapse, recession, loss of jobs, foreclosures, and so on. In most areas of the country, the need for two incomes to maintain a decent standard of living forces many parents to relinquish parenting duties to others; paid parental leave or on-site day care for new parents is still relatively rare and almost always limited. Jobs, as well as economic and social pressures, encourage frequent moves, and this geographical mobility, in turn, removes us from our stabilizing roots, as it did in Lisa’s family. We are losing (or have already lost) the comforts of neighborly nearby family and consistent social roles.

When the accoutrements of custom disappear, they may be replaced by a sense of abandonment, of being adrift in unchartered waters. Our children lack a sense of history and belonging—of an anchored presence in the world. To establish a sense of control and comforting familiarity in an alienating society, the individual may resort to a wide range of pathological behavior—substance addiction, eating disorders, criminal behaviors, and so on.

Society’s failure to provide rapprochement with reassuring, stabilizing bonds is reflected in the relentless series of sweeping societal movements over the past fifty years. We roller-coastered from the explosive other-directed, fight-for-social justice “We Decade” of the 1960s, to the narcissistic “Me Decade” of the 1970s, to the materialistic, look-out-for-number-one “Whee Decade” of the 1980s. The relatively prosperous and stable 1990s was followed by the turbulent 2000s: financial boom-and-busts, natural catastrophes (Katrina and other hurricanes, major tsunamis, earthquakes, and fires), a prolonged war, and sociopolitical movements (antiwar, gay rights)—bringing us almost full circle back to the 1960s.

One of the big losers in these tectonic shifts has been group loyalties—devotion to family, neighborhood, church, occupation, and country. As society continues to foster detachment from people and institutions that provide reassuring rapprochement, individuals are responding in ways that virtually define the borderline syndrome: decreased sense of validated identity, worsening interpersonal relationships, isolation and loneliness, boredom, and (without the stabilizing force of group pressures) impulsivity.

Like the world of the borderline, ours in many ways is a world of massive contradictions. We presume to believe in peace, yet our streets, movies, television, and sports are filled with aggression and violence. We are a nation virtually founded on the principle of “Help thy neighbor,” yet we have become one of the most politically conservative, self-absorbed, and materialistic societies in the history of humankind. Assertiveness and action are encouraged; reflection and introspection are equated with weakness and incompetency.

Contemporary social forces implore us to embrace a mythical polarity—black or white, right or wrong, good or bad—relying on our nostalgia for simpler times, for our own childhoods. The political system presents candidates who adopt polar stances: “I’m right, the other guy is wrong”; America is good; the Soviet Union is “the Evil Empire”; Iran, Iraq, and North Korea are the “Axis of Evil.” Religious factions exhort us to believe that theirs is the only route to salvation. The legal system, built on the premise that one is either guilty or not guilty with little or no room for gray areas, perpetuates the myth that life is intrinsically fair and justice can be attained—that is, when something bad does happen, it necessarily follows that it is someone else’s fault and that person should pay.

The flood of information and leisure alternatives makes it difficult to establish priorities in living. Ideally, we—as individuals and as a society—attempt to achieve a balance between nurturing the body and the mind, between work and leisure, between altruism and self-interest. But in an increasingly materialistic society it is a small step from assertiveness to aggressiveness, from individualism to alienation, from self-preservation to self-absorption.

The ever-growing reverence for technology has led to an obsessive pursuit of precision. Calculators replaced memorized multiplication tables and slide rules, and then were replaced by computers, which have become omnipresent in almost every aspect of our lives—our cars, our appliances, our cell phones—running whatever machine or device they are a part of. The microwave relieves adults from the chore of cooking. Velcro absolves children of learning how to tie shoelaces. Creativity and intellectual diligence are sacrificed to convenience and precision.

All these attempts to impose order and fairness on a naturally random and unfair universe endorse the borderline’s futile struggle to choose only black or white, right or wrong, good or bad. But the world is neither intrinsically fair nor exact; it is composed of subtleties that require less simplistic approaches. A healthy civilization can accept the uncomfortable ambiguities. Attempts to eradicate or ignore uncertainty tend only to encourage a borderline society.

We would be naive to believe that the cumulative effect of all this change—the excruciating pull of opposing forces—has had no effect on our psyches. In a sense, we all live in a kind of “borderland”—between the prosperous, healthy, high-technology America, on the one hand, and the underbelly of poverty, homelessness, drug abuse, and mental illness, on the other; between the dream of a sane, safe, secure world and the insane nightmare of nuclear holocaust.

The price tag of social change has come in the form of stress and stress-related physical disorders, such as heart attacks, strokes, and hypertension. We must now confront the possibility that mental illness has become part of the psychological price.

Dread of the Future

Over the past four decades, therapeutic settings have seen a basic change in defining psychopathology—from symptom neuroses to character disorders. As far back as 1975, psychiatrist Peter L. Giovachinni wrote, “Clinicians are constantly faced with the seemingly increasing number of patients who do not fit current diagnostic categories. [They suffer not from] definitive symptoms but from vague ill-defined complaints. . . . When I refer to this type of patient, practically everyone knows to whom I am referring.”³ Beginning in the 1980s, such reports have become commonplace, as personality disorders have replaced classical neurosis as the prominent pathology. Which social and cultural factors have influenced this change in pathology? Many believe that one factor is our devaluation of the past:

To live for the moment is the prevailing passion—to live for yourself, not for your predecessors or posterity. . . . We are fast losing the sense of historical continuity, the sense of belonging to a succession of generations originating in the past and stretching into the future.⁴

This loss of historical continuity reaches both backward and forward: devaluation of the past breaks the perceptual link to the future, which becomes a vast unknown, a source of dread as much as hope, a vast quicksand, from which it becomes incredibly difficult to extricate oneself. Time is perceived as isolated points instead of as a logical, continuous string of events influenced by past achievement, present action, and anticipation of the future.

The looming possibility of a catastrophic event—the threat of nuclear annihilation, another massive terrorist attack like 9/11, environmental destruction due to global warming, and so on—contributes to our lack of faith in the past and our dread of the future. Empirical studies with adolescents and children consistently show “awareness of the danger, hopelessness about surviving, a shortened time perspective, and pessimism about being able to reach life goals. Suicide is mentioned again and again as a strategy for dealing with the threat.”⁵ Other studies have found that the threat of nuclear war rushes children to a kind of “early adulthood,” similar to the type witnessed in pre-borderline children (like Lisa) who are forced to take control of families that are out of control due to BPD, alcoholism, and other mental disorders.⁶ Many U.S. youth ages fourteen to twenty-two expect to die before age thirty, according to a 2008 study published in the Journal of Adolescent Health. About one out of fifteen young people (6.7 percent) expressed such “unrealistic fatalism,” the study concludes. The findings are based on four years of survey data totaling 4,201 adolescents conducted between 2002 and 2005 by the Adolescent Risk Communication Institute of the Annenberg Public Policy Center. Despite a decline in the suicide rate for ten- to twenty-four-year-olds, suicide remains the third leading cause of death in this age group.⁷

The borderline, as we have seen, personifies this orientation to the “now.” With little interest in the past, the borderline is almost a cultural amnesiac; his cupboard of warm memories (which sustain most of us in troubled times) is bare. As a result, he is doomed to suffer torment with no breathers, no cache of memories of happier times to get him through the tough periods. Unable to learn from his mistakes, he is doomed to repeat them.

Parents who fear the future are not likely to be engrossed by the needs of the next generation. A modern parent, emotionally detached and alienated—yet at the same time pampering and overindulgent—becomes a likely candidate to mold future borderline personalities.

The Jungle of Interpersonal Relationships

Perhaps the hallmark social changes over the last fifty years have come in the area of sexual mores, roles, and practices—from the suppressed sexuality of the 1950s, to the “free-love” and “open marriage” trends of the 1960s sexual revolution, to the massive sexual reevaluation in the 1980s (resulting in large part from the fear of AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases), to the gay and lesbian movements over the last decade. The massive spread of dating and “matching” websites and social media has made it so easy to establish personal contact that the old brick-and-mortar “pickup bar” is becoming increasingly irrelevant. Innocent—or illicit—romantic or sexual relationships can now be initiated with a few keyboard strokes or a text message. The jury is out on whether cyberspace has “civilized” the world of interpersonal relationships or turned it into more of a dangerous jungle than it ever was.

As a result of these and other societal forces, deep and lasting friendships, love affairs, and marriages have become increasingly difficult to achieve and maintain. Sixty percent of marriages for couples between the ages of twenty and twenty-five end in divorce; the number is 50 percent for those over twenty-five.⁸ Even back in 1982, Lasch noted that “as social life becomes more and more warlike and barbaric, personal relations, which ostensibly provide relief from those conditions, take on the character of combat.”⁹

Ironically, borderlines may be well suited for this kind of combat. The narcissistic man’s need to dominate and be idolized fits well with the borderline woman’s ambivalent need to be controlled and punished. Borderline women, as we saw with Lisa at the start of this chapter, often marry at a young age to escape the chaos of family life. They cling to dominating husbands with whom they recreate the miasma of home life. Both may enter a kind of “Slap! . . . Thanks, I needed that!” sadomasochistic dyad. Less typical, but still common, is a reversal of these roles, with a borderline male linked with a narcissistic female partner.

Masochism is a prominent characteristic of borderline relationships. Dependency coupled with pain elicits the familiar refrain “Love hurts.” As a child, the borderline experiences pain and confusion in trying to establish a maturing relationship with his mother or primary caregiver. Later in life, other partners—spouse, friends, teacher, employer, minister, doctor—renew this early confusion. Criticism or abuse particularly reinforces the borderline’s self-image of worthlessness. Lisa’s later relationships with her husband and supervisors, for example, recapitulated the profound feelings of worthlessness that were ingrained by her father’s constant criticisms.

Sometimes the borderline’s masochistic suffering transforms into sadism. For example, Ann would sometimes encourage her husband Larry to drink, knowing about his drinking problem. Then she would instigate a fight, fully aware of Larry’s violent propensities when drunk. Following a beating, Ann would wear her bruises like battle ribbons, reminding Larry of his violence, and insisting they go out in public, where Ann would explain away her marks as “accidents,” such as “running into doors.” After each episode, Larry would feel profoundly regretful and humiliated, while Ann would present herself as a long-suffering martyr. In this way Ann used her beatings to exact punishment from Larry. The identification of the real victim in this relationship becomes increasingly vague.

Even when a relationship is apparently ruptured, the borderline comes crawling back for more punishment, feeling he deserves the denigration. The punishment is comfortably familiar, easier to cope with than the frightening prospect of solitude or a different partner.

A typical scenario for modern social relationships is the “overlapping lover” pattern, commonly called “shingling”—establishing a new romance before severing a current one. The borderline exemplifies this constant need for partnership: As the borderline climbs the jungle gym of relationships, he cannot let go of the lower bar until he has firmly grasped the higher one. Typically, the borderline will not leave his current, abusive spouse until a new “white knight” is at least visible on the horizon.

Periods of relaxed social-sexual mores and less structured romantic relationships (such as in the late 1960s and 1970s) are more difficult for borderlines to handle; increased freedom and lack of structure paradoxically imprison the borderline, who is severely handicapped in devising his own individual system of values. Conversely, the sexual withdrawal period of the late 1980s (due in part to the AIDS epidemic) can be ironically therapeutic for borderline personalities. Social fears enforce strict boundaries that can be crossed only at the risk of great physical harm; impulsivity and promiscuity now have severe penalties in the form of STDs, violent sexual deviants, and so on. This external structure can help protect the borderline from his own self-destructiveness.

Shifting Gender Role Patterns

Earlier in the last century, social roles were fewer, well defined, and much more easily combined. Mother was domestic, working in the home, in charge of the children. Outside interests, such as school involvement, hobbies, and charity work, flowed naturally from these duties. Father’s work and community visibility also combined smoothly. And, together, their roles worked synchronously.

The complexities of modern society, however, dictate that the individual develop a plethora of social roles—many of which do not combine so easily. The working mother, for example, has two distinct roles and must struggle to perform both well. The policies of most employers demand that the working mom keep the home and workplace separate; as a result, many mothers feel guilty or embarrassed when problems from one impact the other.

A working father also finds work and home roles compartmentalized. He is no longer the owner of the local grocery who lives above the store. More likely, he works miles from home and has much less time to be with his family. What’s more, the modern dad plays an increasingly participatory role with familial responsibility.

Shifting role patterns over the last twenty-five years are central to theories on why BPD is identified more commonly in women. In the past, a woman had essentially one life course—getting married (usually in her late teens or early twenties), having children, staying in the home to raise those children, and repressing any career ambitions. Today, in contrast, a young woman is faced with a bewildering array of role models and expectations—from the single career woman, to the married career woman, to the traditional nurturing mother, to the “supermom,” who strives to combine marriage, career, and children successfully.

Men have also experienced new roles and expectations, of course, but not nearly so wide-ranging—nor conflicting—as women. Today, men are expected to be more sensitive and open and to take a larger part in child raising than in previous eras, yet these qualities and responsibilities usually fit within the overall role of “provider” or “co-provider.” It is the rare man who, for example, abandons career ambitions for the role of “househusband,” nor is this expected of him.

Men have fewer adjustments to make during the evolution of relationships and marriages. For example, relocations are usually dictated by the man’s career needs, since he is most often the primary wage earner. Throughout pregnancy, birth, and child rearing, few changes occur in the man’s day-to-day reality. The woman not only endures the physical demands of pregnancy and childbirth and must leave her job to give birth, but it is also she who must make the transition back to work or give up her career. And yet in many dual-earner households, although it may not be openly stated, the woman simply assumes the primary responsibility for the maintenance of the home. She is the one who usually adjusts her plans to stay home with a sick child or waits for the repairman to come.

Though women have struggled successfully to achieve increased social and career options, they may have had to pay an exacting price in the process: excruciating life decisions about career, families, and children; strains on their relationships with their children and husband; the stress resulting from making and living with these decisions; and confusion about who they are and who they want to be. From this perspective, it is understandable that women should be more closely associated with BPD, a disorder in which identity and role confusion are such central components.

Sexual Orientation and Borderlines

Sexual orientation may also play a part in the borderline’s role confusion. In line with this theory, some researchers estimate a significantly increased rate of sexual perversions among borderlines. ¹⁰^,¹¹ Environmental factors that may theoretically contribute to the development of sexual identity include lack of role models, sexual assaults, an insatiable need for affection and attention, discomfort with one’s own body, and inconsistent sexual information.

Family and Child-Rearing Patterns

Since the end of World War II, our society has experienced striking changes in family and child-rearing patterns:

• The institution of the nuclear family has been in steady decline. Largely due to divorce, half of all American children born in the 1990s will spend some part of their childhood in a single-parent home.¹²

• Alternative family structures (such as “blended families,” in which a single parent with children combines with another one-parent household to form a new family unit) have led to situations in which many children are raised by persons other than their birth parents. According to one study, only 63 percent of American children grow up with both biological parents—the lowest percentage in the Western world.¹³ Due to increased geographical mobility, among other factors, the traditional extended family, with grandparents, siblings, cousins, and other family relations living in close proximity, is almost extinct, leaving the nuclear family virtually unsupported.

• The number of women working outside the home has increased dramatically. Forty percent of working women are mothers of children under age eighteen; 71 percent of all single mothers are employed.¹⁴

• As a result of women working outside the home, more children than ever before are being placed in various forms of day care—and at a much earlier age. The number of infants in day care increased 45 percent during the 1980s.¹⁵

• The evidence clearly suggests that the incidence of child physical and sexual abuse has increased significantly over the past twenty-five years.¹⁶

What are the psychological effects of these child-rearing changes—on both children and parents? Though many of these changes (such as blended families,) are too new to be the subject of intensive long-term studies, psychiatrists and developmental experts generally agree that children growing up in settings marked by turmoil, instability, or abuse are at much greater risk for emotional and mental problems in adolescence and adulthood. Moreover, parents in such environments are much more likely to develop stress, guilt, depression, lower self-esteem—all characteristics associated with BPD.

Child Abuse and Neglect: Destroyer of Trust

Child abuse and neglect have become significant health problems. In 2007, about 5.8 million children were involved in an estimated 3.2 million child abuse reports and allegations in the United States.¹⁷ Some studies estimate that 25 percent of girls experience some form of sexual abuse (from parents or others) by the time they reach adulthood.¹⁸

Characteristics of physically abused preschool-age children include inhibition, depression, attachment difficulties, behavior problems (such as hyperactivity and severe tantrums), poor impulse control, aggressiveness, and peer-relation problems.

“Violence begets violence,” said John Lennon, and this is particularly true in the case of battered children. Because those who are abused often become abusers themselves, this problem can self-perpetuate over many decades and generations. In fact, about 30 percent of abused and neglected children will later abuse their own children, continuing the vicious cycle.¹⁹

The incidence of abuse or neglect among borderlines is high enough to be a factor that separates BPD from other personality disorders. Verbal or psychological abuse is the most common form, followed by physical and then sexual abuse. Physical and sexual abuse may be more dramatic in nature, but the emotionally abused child can suffer total loss of self-esteem.

Emotional child abuse can take several forms:

• Degradation—constantly devaluing the child’s achievements and magnifying misbehavior. After a while, the child becomes convinced that he really is bad or worthless.

• Unavailability—psychologically absent parents show little interest in the child’s development and provide no affection in times of need.

• Domination—use of extreme threats to control the child’s behavior. Some child development experts have compared this form of abuse to the techniques used by terrorists to brainwash captives.²⁰

Recall from Lisa’s story that she probably suffered all of these forms of emotional abuse: her father hammered her constantly that she was “not good enough”; her mother rarely stood up for Lisa, almost always deferring to her husband in all important decisions; and Lisa perceived the family’s numerous relocations as “kidnappings.”

The pattern of the neglected child, as described by psychologist Hugh Missildine, mirrors the dilemmas of borderlines in later life:

If you suffered from neglect in childhood, it may cause you to go from one person to another, hoping that someone will supply whatever is missing. You may not be able to care much about yourself, and think marriage will end this, and then find yourself in the alarming situation of being married but emotionally unattached. . . . Moreover, the person who [has] neglect in his background is always restless and anxious because he cannot obtain emotional satisfaction. . . . These restless, impulsive moves help to create the illusion of living emotionally. . . . Such a person may, for example, be engaged to be married to one person and simultaneously be maintaining sexual relationships with two or three others. Anyone who offers admiration and respect has appeal to them—and because their need for affection is so great, their ability to discriminate is severely impaired.²¹

From what we understand of the roots of BPD (see chapter 3), abuse, neglect, or prolonged separations early in childhood can greatly disrupt the developing infant’s establishment of trust. Self-esteem and autonomy are crippled. The abilities to cope with separation and to form identity do not proceed normally. As they become adults, abused children may recapitulate frustrating relationships with others. Pain and punishment may become associated with closeness—they come to believe that “love hurts.” As the borderline matures, self-mutilation may become the proxy for the abusive parent.

Children of Divorce: The Disappearing Father

Due primarily to divorce, more children than ever before are being raised without the physical and/or emotional presence of their father. Because most courts award children to the mother in custody cases, the large majority of single-parent homes are headed by mothers. Even in cases of joint custody or liberal visitation rights, the father, who is more likely to remarry sooner after divorce and start a new family, often fades from the child’s upbringing.

The recent trend in child raising, toward a more equal sharing of parental responsibilities between mother and father, makes divorce even more upsetting for the child. Children clearly benefit from dual parenting, but they also lose more when the marriage dissolves, especially if the breakup occurs during the formative years when the child still has many crucial developmental stages to hurdle.

Studies on the effects of divorce typically report profound upset, neediness, regression, and acute separation anxiety related to fears of abandonment in children of preschool age.²² A significant number are found to be depressed²³ or antisocial in later stages of childhood. ²⁴ Indeed, teens living in single-parent families are not only more likely to commit suicide but also more likely to suffer from psychological disorders, when compared to teens living in intact families.²⁵

During separation and divorce, the child’s need for physical intimacy increases. For example, it is typical for a child at the time of separation to ask a parent to sleep with him. If the practice continues and sleeping in the same bed becomes the parent’s need as well, the child’s own sense of autonomy and bodily integrity may be threatened. This, combined with the loneliness and severe narcissistic injury caused by the divorce, places some children at high risk for developmental arrest or, if the need for affection and reassurance becomes desperate, for sexual abuse. A father separated from the home may demand more time with the child in order to relieve his own feelings of loneliness and deprivation. If the child becomes a lightning rod for his father’s resentment and bitterness, he may again be at higher risk for abuse.

In many situations of parental separation, the child becomes the pawn in a destructive battle between his parents. David, a divorced father who usually ignored his visitation privileges, suddenly demanded that his daughter stay with him whenever he was angry at her mother. These visits were usually unpleasant for the child as well as for her father and his new family, yet were used as punishment for his ex-wife, who would feel guilty and powerless at his demands. Bobby became embroiled in conflicts between his divorced parents when his mother periodically took his father back to court to extract more child support monies. Bribes of material gifts or threats to cut off support for school or home maintenance are common weapons used between continuously skirmishing parents; the bribes and threats are usually more harmful to the children than they are to the parents.

Children may even be drawn into court battles and forced to testify about their parents. In these situations neither the parents, nor the courts, nor social welfare organizations can protect the child, who is often left with a sense of overwhelming helplessness (conflicts continue despite his input), or of intoxicating power (his testimony controls the battle between his parents). He may feel enraged at his predicament and yet fearful that he could be abandoned by everyone. All of this becomes fertile ground for the development of borderline pathology.

In addition to divorce, other powerful societal forces have contributed to the “absent father syndrome.” The past half century has witnessed the maturing of children of thousands of war veterans—World War II, Korean War, Vietnam, Persian Gulf, Iraq—not to mention many prison-camp and concentration-camp survivors. Not only were many of these fathers absent during significant portions of their children’s development, but many were found to develop post-traumatic stress disorders and delayed mourning (“impacted grief”) related to combat that also influenced child development.²⁶ By 1970, 40 percent of World War II and Korean War POWs had met violent death by suicide, homicide, or auto accident (mostly one-car single-occupant accidents).²⁷ The same trend has continued with Iraq War vets. According to U.S. Army figures, five soldiers per day tried to commit suicide in 2007, compared to less than one per day before the war.²⁸ Children of holocaust survivors often have severe emotional difficulties, rooted in their parents’ massive psychic trauma.²⁹

The absent father syndrome can lead to pathological consequences. Often in families torn by divorce or death, the mother tries to compensate by becoming the ideal parent, arranging every aspect of her child’s life; naturally, the child has limited opportunity to develop his own identity. Without the buffering of another parent, the mother-child link can be too close to allow for healthy separating.

Though the mother often seeks to replace the missing father, in many cases it is actually the child who tries to replace the absent father. In the absence of father, the symbiotic intensity of the bond with mother is greatly magnified. The child grows up with an idealized view of the mother and fantasies of forever trying to please her. And a parent’s dependence on the child may persist, interfering with growth and individuation, planting the seeds of BPD.

Permissive Child-Rearing Practices

Modern permissive child-rearing practices, involving the transfer of traditional parental functions to outside agencies—the school, mass media, industry—have significantly altered the quality of parent-child relationships. Parental “instinct” has been supplanted by a reliance on books and child-rearing experts. Child rearing, in many households, takes a backseat to the demands of dual careers. “Quality time” becomes a guilt-induced euphemism for “not enough time.”

Many parents overcompensate by lavishing attention on the child’s practical and recreational needs, yet providing little real warmth. Narcissistic parents perceive their children as extensions of themselves or as objects/possessions, rather than as separate human beings. As a result, the child suffocates in emotionally distant attention, leading to an exaggerated sense of his own importance, regressive defenses, and loss of a sense of self.

Geographical Mobility: Where Is Home?

We are moving more than ever before. Greater geographical mobility can bring rich educational benefits and cultural exchange for a child, but numerous relocations are often also accompanied by a feeling of rootlessness. Some investigators have found that children who move frequently and stay in one place for only short periods of time often have confused responses, or no response at all, to the simple question, “Where is your home?”

Because hypermobility is typically correlated with career-oriented lifestyles and job demands, one or both parents in mobile families tend to work long hours and so are less available to their children. Having few enough constants in their environment to provide ballast for development, mobility adds another disruptive force—the world turns into a menagerie of changing places and faces. Such children may grow up bored and lonely, looking for constant stimulation. Continually forced to adapt to new situations and people, they may lose the stable sense of self encouraged by secure community anchors. Though socially graceful, like Lisa they typically feel they are gracefully faking it.

With increasing geographical mobility, the stability of the neighborhood, community school systems, church and civic institutions, and friendships are weakened. Traditional affiliations are lost. About 44 percent of Americans profess affinity to a different church from the one in which they were raised.³⁰ Generations are becoming separated by long distances, and the extended family is lost for emotional support and child care. Children are raised without knowing their grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins, losing a strong connection to the past and a source of love and warmth to nurture healthy emotional growth.

The Rise of the Faux Family

With society fragmenting, marriages dissolving, and families breaking up, it is no coincidence that the decade has given rise to the “faux family,” or virtual community, to replace the real communities of the past. This yearning for “tribe” affiliation manifests in a variety of ways: football fans identify themselves as “Raider Nation”; 30 million people wait for hours each week to vote for their favorite American Idol, simply to be a part of a larger group with a “common” purpose; and millions of young people join Facebook and MySpace to be a member of a vast electronic social network. Fifty years ago in his novel Cat’s Cradle, Kurt Vonnegut playfully (but prophetically) called these “connections” a “granfalloon”—a group of people who choose, or claim to have, a shared identity or purpose, but whose mutual association is actually meaningless. The author offered two examples, Daughters of the American Revolution and the General Electric Company; if Vonnegut wrote the novel today, the examples could just as easily be Facebook or Twitter.

Since 2003, social networking sites have rocketed from a niche activity into a phenomenon that engages tens of millions of Internet users. More than half (55 percent) of all online American youths ages twelve to seventeen use online social networking sites, such as Facebook and MySpace.³¹ The initial evidence suggests that teens use these sites primarily to communicate, to stay in touch and make plans with friends, and to make new friends. However, the motivation might not be this “pure.” For example, a 2007 study by Microsoft (which should know something about this topic) found that “ego” is the largest driver of participation: people contribute to “increase their social, intellectual, and cultural capital.”³²

Twitter, the most recent electronic “rage” to sweep the (faux) nation, is unabashed in its narcissistic bent. A kind of instant text-messaging service, “tweeting” is intended to announce (in 140 characters or less) “what I’m doing” to a group of “followers.” There is little pretense that the communication is intended to be a two-way street.

Few would dispute the growing narcissism in American culture. Initially documented by Tom Wolfe’s landmark article “The Me Decade” in 1976 and Christopher Lasch’s Culture of Narcissism in 1978, the narcissistic impulse has been evidenced since then by a wide assortment of cultural trends: reality TV turning its fodder participants into instant famous-for-being-famous celebrities; plastic surgery exploding into a growth industry; indulgent parenting, celebrity worship, lust for material wealth, and now social networking creating one’s own group of faux friends. As Jean M. Twenge and W. Keith Campbell note in The Narcissism Epidemic (2009): “The Internet brought useful technology but also the possibility of instant fame and a ‘Look at me!’ mentality. . . . People strive to create a ‘personal brand’ (also called ‘self-branding’), packaging themselves like a product to be sold.”³³

As a relatively recent phenomenon, it is too soon to know whether social media is a passing fad or a transformative technological innovation, though it can be safely said that researchers and clinicians should keep a watchful eye on its overall psychological effect, not to mention the inherent potential physical danger, especially for young people.