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Bipolar Disorder
The Psychopathology of 'Silver Linings Playbook'
Who is the most psychologically disturbed character in this movie?
Posted December 23, 2018 Reviewed by Ekua Hagan
If the Silver Linings Playbook (2012) is a movie that is near and dear to your heart, you probably won’t want to read any further. Apparently, this movie has been sold to people as some kind of romantic comedy. I can understand enjoying the movie, but only if you have a thing for depictions of the slow-motion train wrecks that are other people's lives.
First of all, let's be clear: Everyone in the film is neurotic, not just the Bradley Cooper character ("Pat"), who was just released from a psychiatric hospital. Does Pat have bipolar disorder, as the film suggests? Of course not. There are no discrete episodes of mania (lasting a week or more) or major depression (lasting two or more weeks). What Pat did was to very nearly kill the man he caught naked in the shower with his wife. If we label that act "crazy," then it follows that the person who did it must be crazy (who else does crazy things except crazy people?).
If A, then B; B, therefore, A. That's a logical fallacy.
The bipolar diagnosis was a legal ploy concocted by Pat's defense attorney with the connivance of a compliant legal system — a plea bargain: We don't want to jail you for trying to kill this guy, so go to a psych hospital for a few months instead.
Note that Pat's best friend in the hospital (Chris Tucker) was also psychiatrically hospitalized for criminal acts (assault while high on methamphetamine). His purported "ADHD" and "anxiety disorder" had nothing to do with the violence he committed. How anyone could possibly diagnose either ADHD or anxiety disorder in someone actively abusing meth is beyond my comprehension.
The psychiatrist, Dr. Patel, is arguably no more (no less?) neurotic than Pat. (In fact, Pat and Patel are probably supposed to be some kind of doppelganger.) He is found at a Philadelphia Eagles game, shirtless and with his face painted green. Note that Dr. Patel is the only psychiatrist in the world who wouldn't make adherence to mood-stabilizing medication as a condition for continued treatment for bipolar illness. Because Patel does not insist that Pat take medication (of any sort), we know that not even Patel believes in Pat's phoney-baloney bipolar diagnosis.
Pat's father (Robert de Niro) displays what we used to call an obsessive neurosis; nowadays we might exaggerate and call it OCD. It's a nice portrayal of the common derangement typical of sports fanatics. If you think about sports all the time, it is impossible to focus on what’s wrong with the rest of your life. The mother is probably what we used to call a hysteric with a primary defense mechanism of denial. I wouldn’t be surprised to discover that she is continually disappointed that her physicians never can seem to find out what’s behind her host of health complaints.
Pat's best friend (the guy who is married to Julia Styles) is probably the most disturbed character. One only hopes that he never loses his job and thus his income, which is the only shred of identity he has. He wouldn't be able to face telling his wife about getting fired, so he'll have to kill her when she comes home from her latest trip to the mall. Then, of course, he'll have to kill the baby, not because he wouldn't want it to grow up without a mother, but because he couldn't stand for the kid to grow up knowing that his father was a monster who killed his own wife. Then he'll kill himself. Pretty typical family annihilator.
The Julia Styles character has lost her soul, of course, warped by home remodeling shows and online shopping. She could never be happy in a home without high-end countertops, and the worst thing is, she has no idea why that is. She doesn't like those expensive things — other people and the media have told her that those are the kind of things that she should like. She has no idea what she actually likes or wants. Which means that she doesn't have a self anymore.
The Jennifer Lawrence character ("Tiffany") is a fine example of borderline personality disorder (substance abuse — drinking straight vodkas before the dance performance; promiscuity; mood instability; chronic feelings of emptiness; uncertain sense of identity; etc.). She even tells Pat flat out that she feels "empty" all the time. Oh, and by the way, Tiffany's dead husband? Think about why someone would do something inherently dangerous like stopping to help a stranger fix a flat on a rainy night on the highway. After all, he had a new purchase from Victoria's Secret in the car that he was going to present to Tiffany that night in order to rekindle their flame. He seemed to be strongly ambivalent about getting back home to her.
The characters in this film, without exception, need to do a lot of work on themselves. I look forward to a sequel in which they are all doing productive work and engaging in fulfilling relationships.
