Re: why call it a p disorder
Why call it a Personality Disorder? Well according to the litterature, it kind of goes back to before the 1950's when much of the current thinking, knowledge and language about mental health stems from.
There were a group of patients who exhibited extreme behaviours, dire pshycholgical distress, but couldn't quite be classified as entirely neurotic, or entirely psychotic.
But instead these patients exhibited features of both the neurotic and psychotic personality varying in individual presentation and intensity.
So the bright sparks of the time, felt that these patients resided somewhere on the continum between neurotic and psychotic, and specifically as they couldn't quite be catorgised as one or the other, that they resided on the "borderline" between neurotic and psychotic. And this is how Borderline Personality initially got is name.
As more and more research has been conducted, the term Borderline Personality Disorder has become less and less descriptively relevant to the conditons and symptoms of the disorder. Recently there has been some disucssion in the literature of changing the name to something like "Emotional Dysregulation Disorder" - but again the powers that be can't quite decide as this name has some misleading connotations to it too.
So there you have it. The history, life and times of BPD. enjoy . . .lol.