Where are the boundary lines of representation beyond which the subject is faced with the unrepresentable?
Representations allow for different levels, or degrees, of maturity. They are relative. This gives one reason for favorable prognoses in the treatment of patients with borderline states or certain forms of psychoses, perversions or psychosomatic disturbances.
Each level of representation has its own type of boundary line, its enclosure, its negative, by which it can come into contact with the level that precedes it, as well as with that which follows and contains it. It is a model like that of self-organization, with increasing levels of complexity.
Boundary lines can be either internal or external. Internal boundaries are worked through and integrated in para-excitation, whereas external boundaries refer to a setting, an external support on which the subject then becomes extremely dependent for its vital, albeit narcissistic, equilibrium.
“Boundary” patients are subjects that depend on an external self-erotic setting, a setting that is often lacking because it is exceedingly flexible and not well adapted to the randomness of reality, as the image of armor might suggest. These patients’ drives, poorly controlled by primary representations where perception dominates verbal connections, tend toward strong discharge when the outside object, or whatever replaces it, fails in its support function.
The analyst “works on the boundary lines” by appraising the unrepresentable part the patient is suffering from, using techniques adapted as aids to representation, in accord with each structure and each history. This is illustrated with clinical cases.
Representations; boundaries; negative; setting; support