QUOTE : Periods of relaxed social-sexual mores and less structured romantic relationships (such as in the late 1960s and 1970s) are more difficult for borderlines to handle; increased freedom and lack of structure paradoxically imprison the borderline, who is severely handicapped in devising his own individual system of values. Conversely, the sexual withdrawal period of the late 1980s (due in part to the AIDS epidemic) can be ironically therapeutic for borderline personalities. Social fears enforce strict boundaries that can be crossed only at the risk of great physical harm; impulsivity and promiscuity now have severe penalties in the form of STDs, violent sexual deviants, and so on. This external structure can help protect the borderline from his own self-destructiveness.