Hallie Frank

Borderline empathy: an empirical investigation.

Abstract The purpose of this study was to provide empirical evidence for the concept of “borderline empathy,” and to explore the correlation between empathy and recalled parental practices for both borderline and nonborderline patients. Comparisons were made between a group of female borderline patients and a neurotic control group on tests of nonverbal sensitivity and recollected parental practices. The borderline group showed significantly higher nonverbal sensitivity, providing an empirical confirmation of the concept of the borderline empathy. Borderline patients remembered both parents as more neglectful. The pattern of correlations between nonverbal sensitivity and parental practices was consistent with a theory suggesting that emotional neglect, rather than maternal symbiosis, is a factor associated with borderline empathy.

Psychological determinants of a medical career.

To test the hypothesis that reparation for childhood experience is a factor in the choice of a medical career, a questionnaire was given to first year students in medicine, with first year law students as a control group. When students who chose the same occupation as their parents were eliminated from the sample, male medical students were more likely to have experienced illness in the family during childhood than male law students. Both male and female law students were more likely to have experienced legal problems in the family during childhood.

Psychological factors in the choice of psychiatry as a career

A survey of psychiatrists and non-psychiatrists in a medical faculty examined questions bearing on two hypotheses, that psychiatrists choose their career either to heal themselves or to heal their families. The results provided some support for the psychiatrist as a “wounded healer”. The findings did not appear to be an artifact of more psychiatrists having been in therapy. The results were the same whether or not psychiatrists specialized in psychotherapy.

Borderline empathy and borderline pathology: Constitutional considerations

Abstract The authors present some data on correlations between empathy and recalled parental practices for both borderline and neurotic patients. Speculations are offered as to how this pattern of correlations provide some interesting data consistent with the possibility of a constitutional factor in the borderline syndrome. These speculations are supported both by infant research and recent models described in genotype-environment interaction in psychopathology.

Dynamic patterns for failure in college students. Some further reflections on success neurosis.

Several distinctive dynamic constellations associated with success neurosis are delineated in university students. It appears that success neurosis does not lend itself to any singular dynamic formulation. The traditional explanation based on oedipal competition is limited in its applicability. Pre-oedipal factors appear to assume greater magnitude than has previously been recognized. Dynamic explanations can be fruitfully subdivided into two categories, depending upon whether guilt or aggression is the critical etiological determinant for failure.