Kam-shing Yip
Professor, Department of Applied Social Sciences, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hung Hom, Kowloon, Hong Kong

Series: Mental Illnesses and Treatments
BISAC: PSY036000
DOI: 10.52305/MCFJ9953

People with borderline personality disorder are always known as the most difficult client group to human service professionals. It is partly because of their highly fluctuating moods and relationships with others as well as their impulsivity and highly risky behaviors such as attempted suicide, self-harm behaviors and substance abuse. Coupled with these are a variety of co-morbid mental illnesses including depressive disorder, hysteria, anxiety disorder and brief psychosis.

This book begins with a comprehensive articulation of diagnosis and etiology of borderline personality disorder. Four borderline conditions are clinically identified; they are pre-borderline condition, full energy condition, low energy condition and post-borderline condition. Among these four conditions, many different types of manifestations are explored. A multi-dimensional articulation of different perspectives of borderline features are mentioned including trauma, attachment, self-splitting and emotionality.

Based on the writers’ 30 years of clinical work and supervision of clients with borderline personality disorder, this book is the first step in integrating various clinical perspectives and constructs a comprehensive, empathic and multidimensional CARES model in intervention and practice. “C” implies “Companionship with Chronic Loneliness”; “A” means “Affective Concern behind Projective Anger”; “R” refers to “Reflection of Emotion, Responsibility and Empathy”; “E” implies “Evolving Real Self Constructively”; and finally, “S” means “Soothing and Healing Abandonment Trauma”.