A guide to borderline personality disorder, which is a very complex, serious, and widespread psychiatric illness. A painful and often intractable illness, it involves pervasive instability of emotions, behaviour, relationships and self-image. This is a full introduction to the disorder, which brings together the current thinking and research of experts in the field. It explains what this illness is, what causes it, and what can be done about it. The illness is presented from various psychoanalytical, biological, historical, social and feminist perspectives, while noting the current focus on the trauma histories of many borderline patients.