Understanding the Borderline Mother: Helping her Children Transcend the Intense, Unpredictable, and Volatile Relationship

The title is so long that the author didn't fit: it's Christine Ann Lawson, 2000.

I read this book to better understand a situation in my own life, and although it was somewhat interesting, I didn't find it particularly helpful. Perhaps the most useful bit was an explanation of why the women described can seem like normal parents to the vast majority of observers:

Emotional intensity, impulsivity, unpredictability, and fear of abandonment are symptoms observable primarily by those who have an intimate relationship with the borderline. Casual acquaintances, co-workers, or neighbors are less likely to witness the borderline's sudden shifts in mood, self-destructive behavior, paranoid distortions, and obsessive ruminations.

Lawson categorizes women with borderline personality disorder into four categories: helpless waifs, frightened hermits, bossy queens, and vindictive witches. There's a lot of
heavy-handed parallelism with Alice in Wonderland, and a mix between case histories and biographies (Charlotte Du Pont, Sylvia Plath, Mary Todd Lincoln).

That's the extend of my notes (read in 2004, writing now in 2010)--but now there is a second situation where having more insight would be helpful, so I might try to borrow it again.