Borderline pathology has been studied from many perspectives making its comprehension complex and diverse. The predominant and most accepted view is the psychiatric that proposes a borderline personality disorder (BPD) which describes highly disturbed patients. Many approaches from psychoanalytic theories work with the BPD description and explain its metapsychological features, yet they rely heavily on a clear symptomatic impulsive syndrome that expresses the anxiety of object loss. Patients who show fewer symptoms or even successful adaptation patterns are usually not considered in this spectrum. Nonetheless latent depressions could be disguised by costly defences that manage to hide the patient’s real affective functioning. This presentation will explore the affective basis of borderline pathology as a common denominator to all descriptions and perspectives. It will also attempt to understand the role of the different memory systems in the configuration of its defensive patterns.

Daniela Flores Mosri, Ph.D., is a psychologist who started her research career investigating sleep disorders at the Reticular Formation Lab (run by neurophysiologist Dr Raúl Alvarado Calvillo) at the National Institute of Neurology and Neurosurgery. Their epidemiological research was awarded second place by the National Council of Psychology (CNEIP) in 2000. Dr Flores Mosri trained as a psychoanalytic psychotherapist and her interest in the dialogue between psychoanalysis and neuroscience began in 1999. With the help of Dr Alvarado, Daniela started studying potential methods to do research in neuropsychoanalysis. She then began her doctoral studies, focusing on addiction and examining the spontaneous neurochemical manipulations by users of psychotoxic drugs as a method of investigating the correlates of neurochemical modifications in affect and psychodynamic features.