a) These women don’t have a core sense of self. They’re not “whole” people.” They’re fragmented. If they’re not in relationship with someone, they don’t know who they are. They have to have a source of attention and admiration; it doesn’t matter if it’s negative attention. To some degree, it’s a matter of ego preservation vs. annihilation. (If you want to know more about this, read Daniel N. Stern’s The Interpersonal World of the Infant, Melanie Klein’s writings on the good breast/bad breast, Margaret Mahler and John Bowlby—this material is really dense, but you may find it interesting).""