Did Star Wars supervillian and deadbeat dad Darth Vader have borderline personality disorder? Dr. Eric Bui and his colleagues at Toulouse University Hospital in France claim that he does But it's not true: Vader is no more a borderline than he is a ballerina.
Anakin Skywalker before his transformation
Bui says that as Vader/Anakin moved from childhood to adolescence, he showed problems with impulsivity, rage, and identity crisis--all of which are consistent with borderline personality disorder diagnosis. Media outlets have seized on the story as if Vader/Anakin were a real celebrity.
While the publicity is great, the example is wrong. BPD is a complex mental illness that's hard to understand and easy to misdiagnose. While Vader/Anakin seems to fit some of the criteria, a closer look shows the traits don't add up to provide a cohesive portrait of a person with the disorder.
At first glance, you might not think this is a vital topic--after all, it's just a movie. But I find it bothersome because Bui and others are using this false example to teach their psychiatric medical studients, for gosh sakes. And do we really want a mass murderer to become the newest face of those who suffer from this disorder? There are many others to use, Princess Diana being the best one.
If Darth Vader were a real person, Linda Lyons-Bailey would be his biographer. Linda's Star Wars parable, "Midnight in the Garden," was a category award winner at the 2006 Hollywood Book Festival and was deemed a "remarkable achievement" by the Omni Peace Writing Awards in 2007. She also scripted the Star Wars fan audio drama, "Rise of Nobility." Linda is also a member of my Welcome to Oz family member support group community. Linda read this article and contributed mightily to this blog post. Thanks to her, I've been able to take a much deeper look than the media coverage out there. (Fans, please note that this post is based only on the films, not the expanded universe.)
Does Anakin/Vader meet some of these traits some of the time? Yes. But we all do. Also, borderline individuals have a deep sense of unworthiness and self-hatred. But as a young Jedi, Anakin has a sense of self worth. He is good and knows it. He feels the love from his mother and wife: borderline individuals have a hard time letting the love in.
Another big difference between borderline individuals and Anakin/Vader is the motivation or reasons behind the disordered emotions and behaviors. BPs don't have the coping skills or emotional stability most of us do. Their hurtful behaviors are not willful. Anakin/Vader, however, knows what he is doing. He deliberately makes moral choices (or immoral choices) to gain certain advantages. His are criminal acts, not borderline ones.
For an individual to be diagnosed with any of the 10 personality disorders, certain conditions must be met. Two of these are:
The pattern must be 'enduring and maladaptive' over the lifetime of the person.
As UCLA child adolescent psychiatrist Dr. H. Eric Bender points out in this article, Anakin shows borderline traits. But these do not persist into his adulthood. In other words, when Skywalker made the transformation to Darth Vader, he was firm in his identity as a villain (save a last minute change of heart when he saves his son's life). You can find more information about BPD and adolescence in this former blog post.
The pattern must exist across a broad range of situations and with many people.
As you will see later in this article, some of the traits are isolated to specific people (such as his wife) or just certain circumstances.
Frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment
Article: "Abandonment issues surfaced. Skywalker had a permanent fear of losing his wife, Padme Amidala, and he went so far as to betray his Jedi mentors and companions to try to prevent her death."
It is true that Anakin/Vader murders an entire Order of Jedi Knights and helps the Emperor become a cruel dictator so Anakin won't lose his wife Padme in childbirth. However, there are two reasons why this doesn't meet the BPD criteria:
1. People with BPD fear abandonment when most people don't. They may become jealous over insignificant things, or become upset when an expected phone call is delayed and worry the relationship is over. Anakin/Vader, on the other hand, has real reason: he has vivid premonitions that his wife will die in childbirth. Also, Anakin/Vader handles his months-long war-related periods away from his wife as well as any deployed soldier.
2. The fear of abandonment must be a pattern; a consistent way of relating to many people. Vader/Anakin has fears for just one person (his wife).
A pattern of unstable and intense interpersonal relationships characterized by alternating between extremes of idealization and devaluation ("splitting")
Article: "The future Darth Vader went back and forth between idealizing and devaluing Jedi mentors, such as a humorless young Obi-Wan Kenobi."
Folks with borderline personality disorder tend to see things in black and white, including people. Not being able to see the gray in people is called "splitting." Splitting can happen quickly, as it can in children when they hate mommy one hour and love her the next.
Anakin/Vader's changes of heart toward Kenobi, however, are generally gradual and take place as often as one might see in any other student-teacher relationship. As a Jedi, Anakin is able to see both the good and the bad in his relationship with Kenobi, and has no trouble telling Padme both sides of it at once.Once he becomes a Sith, his attitude toward Kenobi is again stable, for almost two decades. Furthermore, the Jedi has many stable relationships, including that of his wife.
Identity disturbance: markedly and persistently unstable self-image or sense of self.
Article: "Any "Star Wars" fan would recognize Skywalker's identity issues and uncertainty about who he was. His fateful turn to the dark side and change of name to Darth Vader could represent the ultimate sign of such identity disurbance."
In a 1993 edition of the Harvard Review of Psychiatry, Robert J. Waldinger discusses the issue of "identity diffusion" in BPD. He explains that people with BPD don't feel like they have a "self."
Identity diffusion refers to borderline patients' profound and often terrifying sense that they do not know who they are. Normally, we experience ourselves consistently through time in different settings and with different people. This continuity of self is not experienced by the person with BPD.
Instead, borderline patients are filled with contradictory images of themselves that they cannot integrate. Patients commonly report that they feel empty inside, that there "nothing to me," and that they are different people depending on whom they are with.
Randi Kreger is the co-author of Stop Walking on Eggshells.
more...
How to handle difficult people.
