You forgot 'Mommy Dearest'!
Another series of good BPD portrayals is the grandmother in the HBO show 'The Sopranos'. Very realistic, as the behavior traits are more subtle and continue over many episodes.
Dreams have been described as dress rehearsals for real life, opportunities to gratify wishes, and a form of nocturnal therapy. A new theory aims to make sense of it all.
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Psychologically disturbed and mentally ill characters are a staple of Hollywood dramas. While screenwriters can occasionally be quite perceptive about human psychology and family functioning, much of the time their creations do not correspond very well with the behavior of actual people who come to see therapists and psychiatrists for treatment. Sometimes screenwriters are in fact utterly clueless.
It galls me, for example, that even psychiatrists are praising Silver Linings Playbook. The movie makes people think that it accurately portrays a patient with bipolar disorder, but spreads common, destructive myths about the disorder. A person does not suddenly come out of a manic episode just because his romantic interest says something pertinent!
In A Beautiful Mind, a patient with schizophrenia is seen being hounded by several characters with distinct, complex, and unchanging personalities, and who always look the same. They turn out to be delusional creations. Psychotic delusions in schizophrenia are never even close to being that complex and static.
When it comes to borderline personality disorder (BPD), screenwriters have actually done somewhat better, although they do not usually understand the families that produce offspring with the condition. There have been a few movie portrayals, most of which have not been completely off the mark.
Glenn Close’s character in Fatal Attraction, the behavior of whom was not completely unlike someone with the disorder, was a bit of a caricature, but the movie gave very little insight as to what may have made her the way she was.
Anne Hathaway’s character in Rachel Getting Married is a recovering drug addict but shows some features of BPD. The underlying conflict this character has with her mother could have been a little more developed. Maybe the screenwriter, Jenny Lumet, wasn’t too sure about what it should look like.
In Girl Interrupted, the Winona Ryder character did not act much like a patient with the disorder at all, despite her having been told by the movie doctors that she had it (“...the borderline between what and what?!”). Again there were no clues given about why she was having difficulties.
The Angelina Jolie character in that movie actually was much closer to someone with the disorder, but she also had strong antisocial features as well. Antisocial and borderline traits do in fact occur together, although more often in men than women. Thus, her character was not what most laypeople who are familiar with the disorder think of when they envision a BPD sufferer. And once again, no clues were given as to what made her do the things she did.
I have only seen two movies which not only portray people with the disorder with some accuracy but also portray them with some understanding of the family relationship patterns that I believe are the primary risk factors for developing the disorder.
The first of these was the theatrical version of Frances with Jessica Lange from 1982. It was highly fictionalized but inspired by the true story of a minor movie star named Frances Farmer who ended up in a mental hospital. Two scenes in that movie really stuck out for me. In the first, Frances cunningly makes her psychiatrist break into a cold sweat by zeroing in on his insecurities.
In the second, when Frances decides not to continue as a Hollywood star, her very hostile and controlling mother, who had tried to live vicariously through her daughter’s success, lies to her psychiatrist. Mom tells him that Francis has psychotic, paranoid symptoms, which in fact she does not have. The psychiatrist, of course, believes the mother and not his own patient.
As good as that movie is, there is another movie that was far more astonishing: Thirteen from 2003. It absolutely nailed the family dynamics of people with borderline BPD. It should have been subtitled, How to Turn Your Teenager Into a Borderline Without Even Being Abusive.
Many critics saw it as a movie about the dangers that young teens face from peer pressure, rather than as a portrait of family dysfunction. Part of the reason these critics missed the point of this movie is that, ever since certain therapists came up with unscientific and at times observation-free theories about the role of parenting in the genesis of schizophrenia and autism, it seems everyone is afraid to examine the role of family behavior in the genesis of any other psychological disorder. This is political correctness gone amok.
The protagonist of Thirteen, Tracy, starts out with very nice peers and fellow students before she begins to gravitate to the “corrupting” peer Evie. Even though Evie is attractive to the boys at school and thus her behavior might represent temptation for a teenage girl, her other more dangerous behavior would be a signal to less fragile teens to stay as far away as possible. To which peer group a teen is attracted is no accident of fate. Peer pressure is a red herring in the movie because these peers seek one another out.
The most fascinating thing about this movie was that it was co-written by then 15-year-old Nikki Reed, later of Twilight fame, and it was reportedly semi-autobiographical. According to Wikipedia, Reed’s parents divorced when she was two, and she grew up with her mother. She describes herself as having been "shy and a bookworm" until the age of 12 when she became rebellious and emotionally volatile. The relationship between Reed and her mother became strained. At the age of 14, Reed was emancipated; she then moved out and began living on her own.
Nikki Reed and co-writer/director Catherine Hardwicke reportedly finished the script for Thirteen in just six days. Ms. Reed must have had a rare insight into her family, especially for someone so young, because the film is just packed with true-to-life details about what growing up in a “borderline” family is like. In the movie, she also plays the role of Evie, although in reality, her story was far closer to the story of Tracy.
Tracy’s mother in the movie, Melanie, grew up without a mother in her teenage years, is divorced, and is a recovering alcoholic. She lets her recovering cocaine-addict ex-boyfriend, Brady, back in her life, to which Tracy reacts with utter dismay and a torrent of criticism towards Mel. “Why are you doing this to yourself?!” she scolds her mother in a role reversal. Tracy is also perturbed because Mel allows her friends and customers to take advantage of her financially. Tracy’s sense of helplessness over her mother’s behavior seems to be what triggers her self-injurious behavior, cutting.
At one point after seeing Mel with Brady, she flashes back to Brady becoming sick from drugs. She then goes to the bathroom and starts to cut herself. It appears that she knows exactly where the implements of self-cutting are and exactly what to do. The strong implication is that she has done this before — and most likely well before she ever met Evie.
Tracy’s only leverage with her mother is her ability to induce guilt in a mother who is completely overwhelmed by the responsibilities of parenthood. Mel’s guilt probably stems from issues in Mel’s own family of origin.
This power is frightening for Tracy. When coupled with her mother’s covert admiration for Tracy’s freedom, it induces Tracy to begin to follow in her mother's self-destructive footsteps and to exceed them. For example, the mother knows that Tracy has started to steal, but says nothing and looks somewhat approvingly at her stolen clothes. When Tracy finally confronts her mother’s denial, Mel responds that she just did not think it "went that far."
As Tracy begins to act out more and more and to learn more self-destructive behavior from her new friend Evie, Mel tries to set limits. However, Mel always seems to back down in the face of Tracy’s guilt trips, sarcasm, and feigned outrage. At one point Mel completely loses her cool in the face of Tracy’s spoiling behavior and goes into her own rage, starting to destroy her own kitchen until Brady comes in and stops her. Of course, Brady becomes overwhelmed and moves away from Mel.
Mel tries to call in Tracy’s biological father to help control her. The father has apparently been a frequent no-show on his days to be with Tracy because he is always busy with his job; Tracy is bitterly disappointed when this happens. After Mel calls him, he comes to see if he can solve Tracy’s problem and demands to know what is going on “in a nutshell” while continually being interrupted by cell phone calls from work. Tracy’s brother throws his arms up in frustration when the father begs him to tell him what is going on. Later Mel speaks of letting the father take over Tracy full time — she says “I’m terrible” under her breath — but Tracy concludes that her mother does not really want her.
Evie comes from an abusive borderline environment. It’s hard to know exactly what is true about her and what is not because of her incessant lies, but Evie describes her mother as a "crack whore." Her uncle sexually abused her and pushed her into a fire — she has the burn marks and a newspaper article to prove that. Her care has been taken over by Brooke, a plastic-surgery addicted cousin, who lets her drink beer, tells her she is not allowed to go to certain places but never seems to really care what Evie is doing, and disappears for days at a time.
Evie secretly yearns to be adopted by Tracy's better-by-comparison family. For reasons I will not mention here (so as not to spoil the ending for people who have not yet seen the movie), she induces her denial-filled guardian to make a mistake similar to the one made by a lot of movie critics: the guardian blames Evie's reckless behavior on peer pressure — from Tracy!
There are a lot more details in the movie — and there is not one single scene that rings false. Nikki Reed seems to know more about the environment that spawns borderline personality disorder than do most therapists and psychiatrists.
You forgot 'Mommy Dearest'!
Another series of good BPD portrayals is the grandmother in the HBO show 'The Sopranos'. Very realistic, as the behavior traits are more subtle and continue over many episodes.
Also "Postcards from the Edge" for slightly less intense/serious depiction of mother-daughter dynamics (set in Hollywood similar to "Mommie Dearest").
There is also "White Oleander" for a portrayal of a borderline pd mother and how this impacts her teen daughter.
A much older film portraying an extremely domineering, controlling, angry mother who is willing to harm herself in order to gain sympathy and attention, and "make" her daughter feel guilty enough to remain under her mother's control, acting as her mother's nurse/companion, is "Now, Voyager."
I've always felt that "Gone With The Wind's" Scarlett O'Hara demonstrated a combination of Cluster B disorders: she flirted outrageously and craved the attention of men (histrionic pd), she demonstrated rapid mood swings (she loved Ashley, she hated Ashley, she was easily triggered into sulks and rages), narcissistic pd (sense of entitlement and superiority, treated other people like objects with no feelings, stole her sister's fiancé just to marry him for his money, had little motherly feeling for her child) and even antisocial pd (she had no problems with lying, stealing, breaking rules, deceiving and using other people for her own personal gain (no conscience), had no remorse about hurting others (lack of affective empathy) and engaged in revenge behaviors.)
The film and literary characters Madame Bovary and Anna Karenina also show traits of borderline pd; both of them describe feelings of "emptiness", act out sexually, and end up impulsively committing suicide at the end of the story.
I would say white oleander is a good portrayal of narcissistic personality disorder in the mother
As a diagnosed BPD'r, my heart 'crunched' during many of the scenes from this French film. Not alot of backstory. I most identified with the exhausting mood swings, rage and then numbness. (Although, my moments of rage were not triggered so suddenly. Let's say I have a longer fuse than poor Bettie.) Of course, no film is going to be 100% accurate, but this is a good one to understand the degree and magnitude of a BPD'rs emotions.
I have seen the movie thirteen but it never really occurred to me that the teens displayed borderline personality disorder, I guess because I didn't quite know what it was. After learning about BPD in my psychology class I now know what it is and after this article as pointed out the movie Thirteen I now understand BPD a lot better.
This was written as a memoir about depression. However, after seeing the movie I felt, without a doubt, she suffered from BPD! I related so much to the main character it was unreal. Definitely didn't relate to Glenn Close from Fatal Attraction. ::phew::
I am a male with the borderline diagnosis and still get confused when trying to explain the diagnosis despite being in therapy for 30 years. For the most part though, I know it when I see it and I can tell if others have it. I have met many, many fellow borderlines over the years and have seen every movie about borderlines I could get my hands on. Not only is Christina Ricci's character in Prozac nation, the most accurate movie portrayal of BPD, but it mirrors my version of BPD better than anyone I have ever met. It was very frightening watching the movie, because that was me on the screen. It's the only time I can say someone got the portrayal of what I suffer, exactly right. It's textbook BPD. I have seen "13" and I simply don't see myself in any of the characters the way I see myself in Ricci's. Perhaps BPD manifests itself differently in different people but Prozac Nation is the story of my particular brand of BPD.
I read some reviews & discussions about the book (and film) "Prozac Nation", and the author mentioned that the story is semi-autobiographical and based on the author's own diagnosis of "atypical depression" as a teen and young adult. I looked it up at WebMed, and that particular form of mood disorder, a subcategory of major depression, seems to have more in common with borderline pd traits and behaviors than other types of depression.
There is the chance that there is comorbidity, as well. Its not uncommon for someone with borderline pd to also have depression, and vice-versa.
The web site "Beyond the Borderline Personality" has a good article about this book/film RE borderline pd:
http://www.downwardspiralintothevortex.com/2011/03/book-review-prozac-nation.html
So far, the film that best captures my own mother's version of borderline pd is "Mommy Dearest", which I believe shows a combination or comorbidity of borderline pd plus narcissistic pd.
These movies that the author mentions like, A beautiful Mind, and Girl interrupted, are more times than not completely inaccurate. The reason for this is to make the movie more interesting more times than not. I'm reminded of how often movies get wrong the different types of amnesia. Confusing the symptoms that go with anterograde with retrograde. The same things true with mental disorders in movies. Many times the symptoms that go with a specific disorder just aren't interesting enough on their own. Producers, directors, and screen writers feel the need to spice them up a little bit.
that was my beef with this article as well. you can't say that the characters in A Beautiful Mind and Girl, Interrupted don't have schizophrenia and BPD respectively because the characters are real people with schizophrenia and BPD.
you can say the movies portrayed it inaccurately, but trying to suggest that the characters themselves don't have the disorder is backwards.
August: Osage County. Several borderlines, accurate dynamics. Some of it took my breath away, the details seemed so well-observed. And I come from a family that breeds borderline, consider myself an expert. Poor Tracy Letts (the writer). He knew how to create those characters for a reason.
I nearly instantly recognized BPD within August Osage County. The family reminds me of my own, though thankfully not quite to that extreme. The film also reminded me of the play/film "The Glass Menagerie". It's a very accurate portrayal of a Borderline mother and the differing traits of her children. On another note, I have always thought mother gothel in Disney's Tangled was almost Borderline.
http://davidmallenmd.blogspot.com/2010/12/tangled-emotions.html
Another good one is Queen Bee, starring Joan Crawford. It's on the campy side (as are all joan films) but pretty spot on. Good article.
A couple movies which have male characters with BPD behavior are "Patton" and "Fisher King". In Patton a high function BPD with classic symptoms of contol, inpluse control, and rage. In the Fisher King one might consider Robin Williams character suffering from PTSD. Except that once
The character recovers. He's still very BPD. Both movies for
Me and good examples of depth of BPD.
History shows that Gen Patton was diagnosed as suffering from depreesion. A common diagnosis for high functioning male BPD suffers.
I think Thirteen is a good indication of a broken home and family and the traumatic things that can occur to a young person that has to live with those experiences. However, it would not be right to attempt to diagnose Tracy with Borderline Personality Disorder... She is very young. Too young to be diagnosed with any personality disorder. Teenagers change and they go through phases that can relate to experiences that they have had throughout their life.
I do agree that if the character had been older then her manic episodes of rage and behavior executed throughout the film would constitute as borderline personality characteristics.
Don't diagnose a teenager with bpd? I have no idea why anyone would want to put off much needed treatment until the person has all the responsibilities of an adult coupled with untreated bpd. You're in agonising emotional pain, but wait a few years - it might be a phase. Ludicrous.
I watched Thirteen with my dad when I was about 14. I remember so clearly, him telling me that I was just like those two girls. I sort of liked the movie but it scared me a little - like I was watching myself go off the rails...
Like Mel, dad had no idea how to handle my teenage years, or restore the damage of a broken home, or the chaos caused by my borderline mother... And he'd recently become a single father and lost the family home.
Now I'm 28 and have recently been diagnosed with the disorder myself. The doctors believe it began developing around the age of 10-11 and worsened over time. They couldn't have diagnosed me at 10, or 13, and even if they had have tried - a borderline teenager can be completely out of control and is unlikely to cooperate. It can take a long time to realise you need help, and even once you decide to get it - it isn't easy.
When I was counselled as a teenager I never answered dr's truthfully. My parents tried a couple of times to get help for me - but I manipulated them until they let me leave. Another time I stole keys to escape from a hospital.
From 14 years old, I made attempts on my life, self mutilated, and began a terribly long history of abusive relationships. Throughout my life I have been a drug addict, an alcoholic, a nymphomaniac...
Only now as an adult does it all make sense to me... Why I was like that.. And why my mum is still like that.
My advice to anyone that has a teenager anything like these girls - be persistent and don't give up.
10% of borderline personalities will end their own life to stop their suffering. I was nearly one of those statistics, and I feel extremely lucky to still be here...
Until I began getting treatment this year, I was afraid of myself and what I was capable of when provoked...
I believe Thirteen is entirely accurate - that is exactly what the early stages of BPD look like. Sadly; the average sufferer doesn't seek diagnosis until 20 years after it started, and many don't even make it that far.
All of that teenage chaos in my life - it was a way to try and mask my pain. I'm not a bad person, or weak. I was trying to block out my thoughts, and sometimes I just couldn't anymore.. I couldn't even sleep at night without having night terrors.
I wish I was taken for help over and over and over as a teenager. Even if I was too young to be diagnosed, they may have been able to undo some of the mental scars that later became the foundation for my mental illness.
I would also like to add: Professor Kohut from 'The Piano Teacher' - a repressed middle aged woman with extreme sexual fantasies of abuse, most likely derived from her controlling mother (they share the same bed at her age) and Cissy from 'Shame' - a woman in her twenties who behaves like an emotionally vulnerable and impulsive child, seeking nurturance from her brother that is not forthcoming.
Dr Allen, I purchased a copy of Thirteen based on your article. Through your blog I have come to realize my husband and I are at fault for our daughter's behavior, and, based on copious research, I believe she has BPD. We never abused her, physically or sexually, and I never abused her verbally, but her dad did. I loved her beyond words and now see how co-dependent I was with her. I already knew I was co-dependent with my husband, who is an alcoholic with varying personalities. I see myself in Tracy's mom, Melanie. Trying to be buddy-buddy, teasing, "cool", letting things "slide", tacitly agreeing to overlook wrong doing, trying to have the serious talk, but caving, sharing too deeply about personal adult matters. The film also reflects the relationship my daughter had with a classmate, her partner in crime, who came from a troubled household, who practically lived with us, called me "Mom" and she and my daughter begged us to adopt her, or just let her live there. Even Tracy's mom began to refer to Evie as a member of the family as I did with my daughter's friend. Melanie was ultimately stronger than I was, or my husband. We actually moved three times to get our daughter away from the "bad influences" she blamed for her behavior. My husband moved out as he couldn't take our daughter's behavior any more -- we would move back in together when she graduated from high school. I was alone with her for over a year and completely fell apart and allowed things to happen in our condo -- drug and sex parties. I locked myself in my room, and read and wrote and watched TV. I lost complete control over my daughter, tried to go along to get along, because her screaming devaluations of me -- in which she used all the personal info I had shared with her -- were devastating to me. Then, on a visit to her dad's house she and her friends accidentally set fire to it, and burned the entire house down. That seemed to unleash law-breaking on a bigger scale with her until she was arrested and charged as an adult for a crime. Throughout all of this (which started when she was 11) we had seen counselors, psychologists, had family intervention therapy, she was hospitalized twice for cutting, and rage issues, I worked with her schools to get her a 504 and then tried to get an IEP, but she quit school at the end of 10th grade...the only thing I didn't do was look at her father and myself, except to say I knew I had spoiled her terribly. She left us at 17 to move to TN to live with her birthmother (we adopted her at 2-days old) and the rest of her extended birthfamily, who are well-meaning, uneducated, "other side of the tracks" types with drug and alcohol problems themselves. Within 6 months she devalued all of them and now lives with a boyfriend who abuses her, does synthetic weed, sells drugs, prostitutes herself and she has almost completely cut off contact with us, though her Facebook page is public, so I can see and comment on it. She erases anything personal I may say and does not respond to me. Then I found your blog, and through it I now see she was right when she told us in no-uncertain terms that we were never meant to be parents because God made us infertile, and WE F-ed her up. I am starting therapy next week in a quest to look hard at myself and my behavior in hopes I will find a way out of my own weaknesses. Her dad is deep in denial. Part of me hopes that eventually she might find some respect for me that I am getting help, and we might have some sort of relationship again. My fear is that she will die before I make any progress. My background is a dad who lost interest in me unless he needed to show off to his family what a great dad he was and how much control he had over me, and a mom who talked about the best years of her life -- before I came along, and buried herself in books. I love my parents -- but it's because I learned to forgive their frailties. I am not sure my daughter has it in her to be so forgiving. Thank for your blog and thanks for listening.
Having experienced a BPD relationship, I am acutely focused on watching out for the traits of this mental illness, in life - and as art imitates life.
The movie, "Indiscretion" (TV movie 2016, starring Mira Sorvino) was like a flashback of my own experience with BPD: The lavish pursuit by the afflicted, the flattered older woman; the obsession, immediate eternal love; the self-harm and suicide threats (abandonment) - and last but not least - the weird, unsettling smile as a rage sets upon the Borderline when the Borderline realizes their obsession to be loved insatiably has cowered one more victim.
Not a detail was missed.
A comment about this article: There are legions of movies that portray BPD, actually. I'm feeling like this blog was meant more to prompt a discussion than to actually provide a comprehensive and thought-through compilation of BPD-related movies
[add "Gabriel", Rory Culkin, also].
And to that end, the objective was met.
I nominate the character Paulie from the LGBT cult favorite Lost and Delirious as the best cinematic representation of someone with BPD that I've seen. The emotional lability, the impulsivity, the intense "love," idealization, and fear of abandonment, the outbursts of rage, the unstable sense of self...it's all there.
Unfortunately, unlike Tracy and Evie in Thirteen, who are universally recognized as troubled young girls in a cautionary tale, Paulie in Lost and Delirious is usually seen as a tragic romantic figure in a story of repressed same-sex teen love. I understand that director Lea Pool must've wanted to make a movie about the damage homophobia can do, but she ends up portraying Paulie's increasingly obsessive, impulsive, and self-destructive behavior in the wake of her break-up with girlfriend Tori as heroic, devoted, true love in the face of bigotry when actually it's a desperate cry for psychological help in the face of BPD. As a result, viewers tend to come away with the irresponsible message that Tori is to blame for Paulie's downward spiral because she won't come out of the closet, whereas, in reality, Paulie's BPD is the reason she can't cope with the end of her relationship.
To be clear, it's not that I'm unsympathetic to what the director was trying to say about how lives can be ruined by homophobia, but with this particular character, I can't help but think that the outcome would've been equally ruinous even if she and her girlfriend had broken up for reasons that had nothing to do with homophobia since the underlying problem is her borderline reaction to abandonment. In the film's effort to make a political statement, it wastes the opportunity to address this very common, serious, but significantly less "glamorous" mental health problem.
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