Anakin Is Still BPD After All These Years

[lazypadawan]

Remember a few years ago, some psychology researchers came to the conclusion that Anakin suffered from borderline personality disorder? Here's a second article about the same researchers and their findings:

http://www.livescience.com/culture/psychology-darth-vader-revealed-100604.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Livesciencecom+%28LiveScience.com+Science+Headline+Feed%29

Comments

[ladyaeryn.livejournal.com]

Even as someone who loves psychology and mythology, for some reason I have this instinctive aversion to labeling mythological archetypes (which I very much see Anakin as) with post-modern psychological labels. I think part of it's my worry that some people might be oversimpifying what I see as wonderfully complex characterization with a pat, packaged 'diagnosis.' On the other hand... if this helps someone better understand the character, or the disorder, who am I to judge? And, I remind myself, even if someone fits all the textbook traits of a so-called disorder, this doesn't mean that that disorder is all there is to that person.

In any case, it's an interesting question to ponder. There are a couple of major BPD traits that I don't see Anakin possessing - suicidal/self-mutilation tendencies, for instance. While he has some recklessness, you don't see him cutting himself or doing drugs or having a bunch of sex with random people. When considering BPD and Anakin, though, there was one BPD characteristic that stood out to me sharply: the tendency to see those around him as black and white 'good' or 'evil.' Padmé and Palpatine can do no wrong; in RotS the Jedi can do no right. And the notion of 'splitting,' where a seemingly minor trigger causes a BPD person's perception of someone to shift suddenly - as happens with Padmé and Obi-Wan in RotS - that's very Anakin/Vader.

[lazypadawan.livejournal.com]

It did say in the article that Anakin doesn't meet all of the clinical criteria for BPD but he got something like five out of six, meaning he would be diagnosed with BPD.

I think I've said before that narrowing Anakin's actions to the product of a mental disorder kind of robs the moral responsibility out of the story but I've also said that Anakin would have been better off getting therapy instead of training to be a Jedi.

[sreya.livejournal.com]

Interesting how, while they discuss the idea that "many" teens may be BPD and therefore relate to Anakin, they fail to mention that in the second movie, Anakin is still a teenager. (It also sounds more like BPD is a developmental issue, being stuck in a teenage state of mind, from their description anyway. Of course, that could be just that it's a short article oversimplifying something.)

[knight-ander.livejournal.com]

That's a very interesting article. Thanks for sharing. :)

[darth-pipes.livejournal.com]

There was someone who read the first Clone Wars campaign (comics, books, etc.) that Anakin did look like he suffered from severe PTSD.

[lazypadawan.livejournal.com]

I've seen some fan fiction that features Anakin suffering from PTSD, too.