Whose Borderline is it anyway?

A special edition of the Journal of Psychosocial Studies commissioned articles to engage critically with questions about what is going on with the diagnosis of ‘Borderline’? This event provides space for some thought and reflection on some of the issues raised.

The diagnosis and concept of ‘borderline’ has become one of the most used in the psy-lexicon. And yet it remains one of the most controversial.

‘Borderline’ has emerged in the past couple of decades as a common feature, not only of the psychiatric landscape, but has also become an object of public discourse clearly visible in the wider culture of the ‘western’ world.

‘Borderline’ and its assumed associated problems figure saliently among the problems perceived to be significant within mental health services, primary care, welfare services and even the education system.

Borderline has also received high levels of dissent and criticism, both from within the mental health professions and from the outside. Service user and survivor groups have aimed fierce criticisms at diagnostic and treatment practices.

2.30pm: Welcome

3 .00pm: Whose borderline is anyway? (Jo Lomani and David Jones)

Francesca Lewis – The borderline as diagnostician: an autø/gnøstic reading of a history of binaries

Hattie Porter: It’s not my sense of self that’s unstable, it’s the world’s sense of me: the harms of the construct of ‘personality disorders’ towards transgender communities

Cassie Lovelock – Are you borderline or did you grow up without a racial identity?

Nina Fellows – The lability and liability of female ‘borderline’ sexuality: a feminist Foucauldian discourse analysis

David Jones: A history of borderline: disorder at the heart of psychiatry

4.00pm: Discussion: Where now?

5 .00pm: Drinks and nibbles

1 8-45 – Close

Date: Thursday Nov 2nd 2023

Time: 14:30:00 GMT+0000 (Greenwich Mean Time)

Location: Anomalous Space 36 Pentonville Road, London, N1 9HF (This venue is accessible)

Tickets and Details: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/whose-borderline-is-it-anyway-tickets-721944825407?aff=oddtdtcreator

Organisers:  David Jones & Jo Lomani