Re: borderline personality or PTSD?

["James Hord" <Jim@xxxxxxxx>]

Jumping in here, I think that Judy and Bruce are both correct... or would be correct.. if
we agreed on an operational definition of what the term "damaged" means.  Many people go
through life with little or no apparent affects of early child abuse.  However, it would
be foolish to say that their self concept was unchanged as they go through other life
experiences.  For example, would a woman who was sexually "seduced" as a child in an
otherwise "good" relationship be a different kind of mother in areas of protecting her own
daughters?  Of course she would.  This, like all experiences in life, affect who we are.
To call this "damage" is a matter of deciding how we will use the term.

Child abuse is a cultural term as we all know.  What is abuse in one culture may not be
abuse in another, as distastful as that may be to recognize.  Damage often comes from the
clash of the childs concepts of the experience, verses the childs developing expectations
and understandings of what is expected and acceptable in the his/her culture.  We all need
to feel that we fit in somewhere, and many of these children never get away from the
concept that they do not, because of their past experiences.  That is damage.

Jim Hord
James E. Hord, Jr. Ph.D.
Clinical Psychologist
http://pswf.com
Jim@xxxxxxxx