Borderline Personality as a Disorder of Temporality - A Phenomenological Meta-Synthesis

This paper synthesizes research on temporal experience in Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) from a phenomenologically grounded perspective. It advocates for a closer integration of phenomenology with empirical research results, with the specific goal of bridging the gap between theoretical and evidence-based understanding of BPD temporality. Utilizing a variant of indirect phenomenology, the paper adopts phenomenological insights into temporality to integrate the existing literature from cognitive sciences, chronobiology, and psychoanalysis, which provides qualitative, quantitative, and theoretical inputs. The findings reveal a coherent picture of BPD temporality characterized by fragmentation and discontinuity. Past experience is dense yet disorganized and recreated in the presence of present affective stimuli. The present absorbs one in an immediate, immersive manner. The future is perceived as blurred and disowned, with its horizon being truncated. This contributes to the feeling of being stuck and disoriented within one's temporal landscape. One lives in disturbing cycles between a negativity-biased past and a narrow present, which hinders the process of self development.