Reducing Borderline Personality Disorder and Suicide in people in Russian populations
Russia’s Borderline Personality
FREDO ARIAS-KING
ARLENE KING DE ARIAS
FREDO ARIAS DE LA CANAL
Abstract: Russia behaves in a fundamentally different way. The authors compare
Russia’s international behavior with the clinical diagnoses of Borderline Personality
Disorder. They describe various traits of this disorder with an emphasis on handling
those suffering from it.
Keywords: Borderline Personality Disorder, codependence, countermoves, inferiority
complex, interpersonal sensitivity, insularism, limit-setting, maladaptive traits, Manichaeism,
mirroring, narcissism, neurosis, projection, projective identification, rationalization,
situational competence, split cultural identity, sponging, syncretism, undefined
boundaries, unstable identity, victimization
ny outsider who comes in contact with Russia soon realizes that it behaves in a fundamentally
different way. Sometimes Russia reminds us of people we know, leading
us to speculate that it must somehow have a collective personality, which makes it all the
more challenging and alluring. We speak of Russia’s mysterious “deep soul” (even “slave
soul”) gleamed by reading Fyodor Dostoevsky or listening to Aleksandr Skryabin. Fyodor
Tyutchev famously remarked that Russia cannot be understood with the mind, only emotionally.
Winston Churchill even more famously regretted that Russia “is a riddle wrapped
in a mystery inside an enigma.” A Gorbachev supporter once praised the former Soviet
leader as a master psychoanalyst who knew how to change Russia whereas others would
have failed.1 A leading Western Sovietologist, Fiona Hill, once mentioned that Russia
“resembles a paranoid individual.”2 Another one, Peter Rutland, warned that any attempt
to dissect Russia’s enigmatic personality is bound to raise more quest
