Living in the Borderland

Living in the Borderland addresses the evolution of
Western consciousness and describes the
emergence of the 'Borderland,' a spectrum of reality
that is beyond the rational yet is palpable to an
increasing number of individuals. There are many
people whose experience of reality is outside the
mainstream of Western culture; often they see
themselves as abnormal because they have no
articulated frame of reference for their experience.
The concept of the Borderland personality explains
much of their experience.

Building on Jungian theory, Jerome Bernstein argues that a greater openness to transrational
reality experienced by Borderland personalities allows new possibilities for understanding and
healing confounding clinical and developmental conundrum. He describes his clinical
research which links Navajo medicine and Western treatment modalities for the treatment of
trauma, environmental illness and other Borderland syndromes.

In three sections, this book charts the evolution of Western consciousness, examines the
psychological and clinical implications and looks at how the Borderland consciousness bridges
the mind-body divide. It challenges the standard clinical model, which too often views
normality as an absence of pathology and equates normality with the rational, and abnormality
with the transrational. Jerome Bernstein describes how psychotherapy itself often contributes
to the alienation of many Borderland personalities by misdiagnosing the difference between
the pathological and the sacred and uses case studies to illustrate the potential such
misdiagnoses have for causing serious psychic and emotional damage to the patient.

This challenge to the orthodoxies and complacencies of Western Medicine's concept of
pathology will interest "Borderlanders" (whether they know they are or not), Jungian Analysts,
Psychoanalysts, Psychotherapists, Psychiatrists, Environmental Physicians, and early
childhood educators and clinicians.