Practice Wisdom: Differentiating Borderline and Histrionic Personalities

"My supervisor suggests that these different driving forces manifest in the intent behind the client's "dramatic, emotional, or erratic" behavior. Specifically, it is more characteristically erratic in BPD - the emotionality is not typically planned or intended, but the result of the client feeling like s/he is out of control, or even dissolving. In contrast, the behavior seems more instrumental (i.e., goal directed) in HPD - it is in service of gratifying the need for attention, with more calculation as to the effect the behavior will have on others. Thus, clients with BPD may be much more likely to experience unintended effects of their behavior, but still be unable to choose more adaptive behavior. My supervisors suspected that our client had HPD because she seemed more in control and calculating in her behavior than one would expect from BPD."

See entire article @ Practice Wisdom