title: Karen Horney's "resigned person" heralds DSM-III-R's borderline personality disorder.
abstract: It is shown here that what Karen Horney called the resignation solution to the problem of basic anxiety leads to psychopathology very similar to DSM-III-R's borderline personality disorder (BPD). Both the "resigned person" and the borderline personality show instability of self-image, social relationships, and mood, and live out the associated deficits with similar styles. While not specifically using the term "splitting", Horney showed how alternating expansive and self-effacing trends can coexist in the resigned person, and how these oscillations in self-other-world constitution influence the resigned person's behavior in a way similar to borderline splitting. Horney's descriptive and psychodynamic analysis of the resignation phenomenon elaborates and gives additional credibility to DSM-III-R's BPD as a diagnostic category.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry, University of Maryland School of Medicine, Baltimore.
authors.forename: R J
authors.initials: RJ
authors.lastname: Muller
mesh_terms: D001883:Borderline Personality Disorder / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000266:history / Q000523:psychology; D003674:Defense Mechanisms; D003937:Diagnosis, Differential; D049673:History, 20th Century; D006801:Humans; D009497:Neurotic Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000266:history / Q000523:psychology; D011569:Psychiatric Status Rating Scales; D011572:Psychoanalysis / Q000266:history*; D012569:Schizotypal Personality Disorder / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000523:psychology; D009626:Terminology as Topic; D014481:United States