Abstract :
[en] Objective: The present study investigated the Autobiographical Memory (AM) in borderline disorder population. AM is an entity that encompasses the individuals’past personnal experiences. Previous researches have shown disturbances in AM among several psychiatric disorders such as depression, schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. This disturbances take the overgeneral retrieving form. Thus, when patients were asked to retrieve a specific event located in time and place, they recalled an overgeneral event. This deficit is not an isolated phenomen. Indeed the researches showed that AM deficits is related to decreasing of the ability to solve interpersonnal problem (Evans et al., 1992; Goddard et al., 1996) and impairments to project onself into the specific future events (D’argembeau et al., 2008; Williams et al., 1996). Impairments to respond adequately to social problems or to concrete plans for the future create hopelessness and to contribute to suicide attempt (Arie et al., 2008). Given the high risk of suicide or suicide attempts present in the Bordeline Personnality Disorder (BPD), consideration of AM in this population is appropriate. The aim of the present study was investigate the AM, the projection into the future and the problem solving in patients suffering from BPD. Method: 21 subjects BPD and 21 healthy controls participated in this study. First, the participants were asked to complete TeMA (validated French versions of AMT by Neumann & Philippot, 2006). Participants were instructed to generate specific past and future memories in response to cues words. Secondly, they were had to complete the OTT, they were asked to yield the most solutions as possible to daily problems. Finally the depression was controlled as well as neuropsychological variables. Results: The subjects with BPD recalled less specific past events and imagined less specific future events than healthy subjects (t(40) = 2.21, p = .031; t(40) = 3.4, p = .001, respectively). In addition, the number of past and future specific events was marginally correlated (r(42) = .31, p = .051). However, no difference between two groups on OTT and no correlation between past specificity and problem solving emerged. Discussion: As other clinical populations, the subjects with a BPD encounter deficits to retrieve specific past events. Moreover, these impairments are associated with deficits to imagine specific future events. Nevertheless, the ability to generate specific events was not related to the ability to solve problem. The observation of reduced specificity in the generation of autobiographical material is particularly clinically relevant. Indeed, difficulty in imagining the future may contribute to relapse. In conclusion, more systematic measure of this ability should be taken in both research and clinical fields.
