Chapters 31 & 32 Summary and Analysis

Chapter 31 presents a 3-page extract from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. The text of the chapter is a clinical description of the condition known as borderline personality disorder. The prior narrative has suggested varying diagnoses for Kaysen but borderline personality disorder is the formal diagnosis for the mental illness considered in the memoir. Kaysen notes that terminology has changed in the intervening years (the extract is from 1987). The diagnostic features of borderline personality disorder include: pervasive pattern of instability of self-image; instability of interpersonal relationships; instability of mood. Various less-common or non-pervasive traits are also described. The placement of the chapter within the memoir is problematic; nearly at the end of the text, it perhaps invites the reader to search elsewhere for a clinical description of the formal diagnosis, which is reported much earlier within the text...