The Female Adolescent “Borderline”: Psychiatric Disorder, Intellectual Anomaly, or Both?

Abstract

The use of the descriptive term “borderline” has in recent years been applied to a multitude of clinical entities. Confusion centers around its exact definition and whether we are dealing with a psychiatric or intellectual label. It is the thesis of this chapter that there exists, in addition to a psychiatric disorder and an intellectual anomaly, a condition that has elements of both. We will focus on the adolescent girl in this paper, as with girls the condition masks itself in a cloud of emotional complications, whereas with adolescent boys the major focus may move into the “criminal,” antisocial realm. Thus the condition of the adolescent female begs for treatment and the behavior of the adolescent boy is met with controls. This may reflect society’s double standard: in this case the female gets the better deal.