"This book offers a comprehensive exploration of the relationship between gender, the experience of psychological distress that we currently call borderline personality disorder, and the borderline diagnosis as a classification of psychiatric disorder.

It offers a new emphasis on elements of female socialization as critical to the understanding of the development of symptoms currently labeled borderline, and should appeal to psychologists, psychiatrists, social workers, and other mental health professionals as well as graduate students in these disciplines. The book will also be valuable to those involved in the fields of women's studies, psychology of women, sociology, and the history of medicine."--BOOK JACKET.