Borderline personality disorder is a severe psychiatric illness. A key feature of the disorder is a disorganized sense of self often referred to as identity diffusion. Autobiographical memory is memory for personal life events. One of the main functions of these memories is to enable us to understand who we are by connecting past, present and future experiences. It seems that autobiographical memory is in some way disrupted in individuals with borderline personality disorder. A systematic review is conducted looking at studies that focus on the potential connections. We find that although a number of studies have been published results remain inconsistent. Furthermore, we find that many of the studies suffer from inadequate designs particularly regarding the reported measures of autobiographical memory. We discuss potential links between personality functioning, identity diffusion, autobiographical memory and borderline personality disorder. Copyright � 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.