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And, borderline experts say, is what makes partners with this
particularly disorder so engaging at first. "Successful men who may be
obsessional, who tend to suppress emotion, can go for the passion,"
presented by a relationship with a borderline, says Frank Yeomans, a BPD
expert and clinical associate professor of psychiatry at the Weill Medical College of Cornell University. "They say to themselves, 'She fills an intensity that's missing from my life.'"

The more audacious symptoms of BPD-such as angry outbursts or
experiments with self-harm--as willful efforts to manipulate others or
attract attention. But in recent years biologists have been looking
deeper at the psychological and neurological causes of BPD and have
sketched a radically different picture of the ailment.BPD patients do not choose to act the way they do; they are buffeted by a combination of unconscious
processes--an unusual tendency to pick up on the subtle facial
expressions of others, coupled with hyperactive emotional responses.In addition, a brain region that helps to guide people amicably through social scenarios seems to malfunction in BPD sufferers, an impairment thatmay add to their insecurity in relationships. These findings establish BPD's credentials as a brain disease. The work also has inspired more effective therapies, based on perceptual and emotional underpinnings of the disorder. Psychotherapy
for BPD is now enabling patients to overcome an illness that has long
been viewed as a life sentence. "This is a disorder that everyone, for a
long time, said was untreatable," says psychiatrist John Gunderson of
Harvard Medical School and McLean Hospital. "Today our research shows that when treated properly, BPD is actually a good-prognosis diagnosis." Excerpt 2:A 2008 study led by neuroscientist Brooks R. King-Casas of Baylor showed that people with BPD lack the brain activity that, in most people, interprets social gestures, such as those that signal trust. The
researchers tested the ability of BPD patients to interpret the actions
of a partner (in this case, the amount of money he or she invested) in a
betting game as signs of trust or its absence-something those with the
illness had trouble doing.The scientists found that a brain area
called the anterior insula, which responded to the investment level in
the healthy participants, was unresponsive to this amount in the BPD
patients. The insula ordinarily monitors uncomfortable interactions with
others, such as those stemming from the violation of trust and other
social norms.But the BPD patients seem to lack this gauge in
their brain, leading to their difficulty perceiving a breakdown of trust
from others actions. As a result, patients may not feel they can trust
others. Thus, although people with BPD may be hypersensitive to subtle
facial expressions, they are impaired when it comes to perceiving true
signs of social collaboration--or the lack of it. That is, people with BPD may be sensitive to less reliable social cues.

 

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/stop-walking-eggshells/201007/are-borderlines-more-sexual-plus-the-science-bpd