From the author: I wanted to say to my wife: “Darling, please pour me some coffee,” but it turned out: “You ruined my whole life, you bastard!” A person with a borderline personality organization causes ambivalent feelings in those around him his people - from aching pity to disgust and rage. And as polar as these emotions evoked by the “border guard” among those around him are, so polar are his qualities as a person, his actions, and judgments. Moreover, at every moment of time such a person is most sincere in presenting himself. Perhaps he is capable of conscious lies and even resorts to them, but he is still immeasurably more susceptible to unconscious self-deception due to the desire for, again, unconscious idealization of everything around. In this article I want to highlight two types of “border guards” - dependent and codependent . Perhaps this division is not entirely correct from the point of view of academic science, and also in view of the fact that often chemically dependent persons during remission demonstrate the behavior of codependents, however, the practice of psychotherapeutic work with this category of people indicates the presence of characteristics of the psychological organization and pathological manifestations of each of the designated types, as well as some differences in the ontogenetic formation of their “borderlines.” First, I want to note the general aspects of the personal history of almost every such person. For example, even at the preverbal stage of development, splitting appears - thinking in terms of extremes: bad - good, always - never, etc. Here I want to dwell on the opposite of omnipotent - helpless, because, from my point of view, further transformations of this pair of extremes personifies the difference between the dependent and codependent types of “borderline.” People of the codependent type have an illusion of their own omnipotence regarding control - an unconscious conviction that “I am able to control everything, I am responsible for everything around me.” Not all of them realize this, however, this is indicated by the debilitating feeling of guilt that regularly arises in situations that are out of control or do not develop according to the planned scenario. And at these moments such a person finds himself in a position of helplessness. A trivial example: when marrying a man who drinks, a woman is sure that thanks to living with her and the efforts she makes, he will stop drinking. However, having gone through all the circles of hell, she discovers that she is unable to induce him to sobriety. And here it is - helplessness in all its glory. For addicts, this cycle begins from the other end. As a rule, these are people with inadequate self-esteem (severely underestimated in alcoholics and overestimated in drug addicts). In both cases, a feeling of helplessness accompanies them throughout their sober period of life. And because sooner or later, this feeling becomes unbearable, the person begins to use. And in an altered state of consciousness, a feeling of freedom and omnipotence appears, for which, in fact, addicts use psychoactive substances. This fork of extremes is formed from children's egocentrism, when the child feels himself to be the center of the universe, which saves him from a feeling of helplessness. At an early age this is the norm. In adults, this should develop into a fork of opportunity - limitation, which never happens in borderline individuals. One of the reasons for this phenomenon may be, for example, breastfeeding strictly according to the clock, when the child, demanding food “at the wrong time,” never receives it, and when he falls asleep, he is woken up and forced to eat, because “it’s time.” Or later, when his parents make increased demands on him, however, no matter how hard he tries, he cannot please them - for all his successes, he hears: “Okay, BUT I SHOULD HAVE TRY EVEN BETTER.” Such a child is likely to grow up to be an alcoholic. Drug addicts in childhood often have another extreme of parental behavior, which is very clearly personified by an anecdotal situation that goes something like this: Vovochka is walking on the street. Mom looked out the window and called him. Child.