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pseudogeekEspecially in cinema.
Borderline is an organisation, a syndrome or a disorder of mood and relationships. It is about this emptiness in the heart that makes one needs a another person to fill in that void and regulate one's emotions. But the impulsive nature of the borderline makes this relationship full of tension and chaos. This results in many symptoms, the most important of them made in criteria for the DSM.
1. Frantic efforts to avoid being abandoned. The rejection can be real or imaginary. Side symptom to this criterion: paranoia about being abandoned. The efforts are not passive, but often with violence and vengeance. This violence can be towards the other (the object of attachment), others (as in a person outside their relationship) or towards self. Self-mutilation is not included in this criterion.
^This one is usually portrayed rather well in fictions. You can't do this one wrong. It's called a yandere in Japan I believe.
2. Unstable, intense and polarised interpersonal relationships. This means one minute the borderline considers his or her or hir object of affection a god and a perfect being, and next minute he/she/zie would call the same person a worthless piece of shit.
^Sometimes used in fiction.
3. Same thing as (2) but applied to self. Unstable and polarised perception of one's own identity. Tend to have many identities that identify as the same person, but have vastly different perception of self and/or behaviors. The change seems to be a mechanism of adaptation that changes according to the situation the person is in. (Can be cracked via projective tests because they don't know the good or the expected answer.)
^This is sometimes called a Stepford Smiler on TV Tropes.
4. Lack of control in at least two domains that can be harmful to the subject. It is a habit that the subject does to seek pleasure and maybe regulation of his/her/hir emotions. Can be chronic or in reaction to a chronic pain. Does not include self-mutilation, gambling or kleptomania.
^This is where I start to complain. This criterion can be anything that's harmful and chronic and isn't the 3 exceptions above. But in movies, it's almost always sex and drugs (legal like alcohol or illegal like heroine). The criterion includes driving like crazy, shopping like crazy (not the way normal shopping-a-holics are doing it; here it's really pathological, like getting bankrupt by doing it all the time and it's not even things you need), eating like crazy, doing sports like crazy, getting pets like crazy so the room's filled with cats or tanks with fish or snakes, writing porn like crazy (no, fanfiction writers, yours are not pathological... I hope), drawing like crazy (no, artists, you're probably fine, it has to be harmful like drawing all over one's walls or something, like de Goya's Black Paintings probably... I call it harmful because he was probably ruminating the black thoughts by looking at them everyday, the paintings serving as dark remainders to self instead of detaching the traumatic memories) or maybe even blogging like crazy. Why is that it's always sex and drugs in movies? I understand that a lot of them did have sex problems, but doesn't shopping sound more usual than doing drugs? Maybe drinking is common enough, but there are just so many ways that borderline people can be borderline in this criterion and most movies only do sex, drinking and drugs. Heck, so many people do illegal car races and this can be this criterion if they have another addiction like drinking. (No, having one criterion doesn't make one borderline. Usually normal people have one or two borderline symptoms in less severe or less chronic way. This is one of the reasons why this is called borderline. It's borderline between non-functional and functional, socially accepted and not accepted.)
5. Threats or actual auto-mutilation or suicide attempts. This is in about 75% of the borderline patients. Usually part of frantic efforts to retain someone or as a call of help and attention.
^Movie makers tend to remember this one. Guess it's because of the "attractiveness" of blood. Or the emotional impact.
6. Unstable mood. Changes are fast and intense. Hardest criterion to work with.
^Sometimes happen in movies, but it's often justified (as in the other person was being a colossal douche) so not this criterion.
7. Chronic feeling of emptiness.
^Poets of a certain type seem to be always equipped with this criterion.
8. Intense, excessive, uncontrollable anger. Can be inappropriate (as in over-reacting).
^This overlaps with so many other things that it's often not written as part of a borderline character.
9. Paranoiac or dissociative symptoms.
^What does this even mean? It can mean imagining that someone is about to leave you, is cheating on you, or that someone is out to kill you, feeling strange or even losing track of time. I lose track of time a lot, especially when surfing on the Internet, so I feel dissociative already. When I wake up in the morning, many times I'm not sure that time it is and need to check the clock. Ok, enough sarcasm, but this criterion is vague. It should be two criteria, not one. Usually in movies it's the paranoia aspect, usually about a lover cheating on or about to leave the borderline and/or the borderline fearing that others are out to humiliate or kill the subject. It's hard to see movies that explore the dissociative side, as in feeling that the world is unreal or strange, having almost an out-of-body experience, seeing self as a stranger or lose track of time.
Maybe it's just me who doesn't know what being borderline is like because I'm not a psychologist and will probably not become one, but is it just me or it seems that movie makers usually just pick whichever symptoms that look more "exciting" and patch them up to sell? We have non-angry borderline like Kiki from Borderline (2008) and we have the crazier type like the woman from Liaison Dangereuse, but it seems that the current image of borderline in cinema is a clingy woman with relationship issues. Yes, borderline is a relationship issue, but it is also a mood issue and a self-control issue. There is great overlap between borderline and unipolar major depression, borderline and post-traumatic stress, dysthymia (it's like unipolar major depression, but less intense and longer) and substance abuse. Depression and dysthymia are not only about a depressive mood, but also of anhedonia, the incapacity to experience pleasure even in something that usually pleases the subject. Most movies show the depressive mood by having the character feel sad and lonely and because of this go do their bad habit for pleasure, get the short-term pleasure, but fall back to sad and lonely after. If the character was really in the clinical depression phase, not even the bad habit will give him or her pleasure. The borderline would do it and immediately not feel the pleasure. This is implied sometimes, but more often the movie would go "Heaven with you, Hell without you" route instead.
Oh well, most movies are not educational material anyway.
How many people actually know what "mania" means? And "bipolar"?
Mania is the opposite of depression. It means that a person is overwhelmed with energy and confidence. Sadly, humankind isn't good with the feeling of power, so many clinically manic* persons would do crazy things that get themselves or others in trouble and require to be locked up. I'm sure that many people who are manic would just say "This means I can finish writing my 500,000,000 words novel!", "I can paint the greatest painting of all times and spaces!" or "Hey! I feel like a god today! If I'm that powerful, then I should do a Glee marathon tonight because fuck jobs and food, I can watch TV all night." But they won't even be diagnosed in the first place. Those who get caught are the ones who try to stop a moving train while naked or something.
*(both "maniac" and "manic" are adj. of mania, but because of long history of "maniac" being used for "crazy people" they are not that interchangeable anymore and I will try to use "manic" only to avoid confusion)
Mania is a state. The person experience mania is much more pumped and confident than his/her/hir normal state. There is also an implication of lack of control. A person who is always hot-blooded and over-confident is called a hot-blooded idiot (not a clinical term). Clinically it's another thing. Some personality organisation/symdrome/disorder if there is one.
Bipolar means, as the word would imply, moving between two extremes. It means that the person will sometimes feel depressed, sometimes feel full of energy and ultra-confident and sometimes fill both at the same time (it's called a mixed state). If a person only feels one, then the person is unipolar, not bipolar. And bipolar is not about having two personalities, that is DID, short for Dissociative Identity Disorder.
And schizophrenia and DID are not the same thing at all. Schizophrenia is about hallucinations. DID is about a lack of integrity in one's identities. A person with schizophrenia has only one personality. All the hallucinations are others, if they are persons. A DID has many identities and they are all him/her/hir, but at the same time not because each as its own consciousness (as many consciousness as the number of identities). A normal person with many identities is usually not DID. It's DID only if there's more than one consciousness. So when you see someone make a sculpture with three people on it and call it the three aspects of himself/herself, it's not DID, just a poet/artist's thing. And compartmentalisation.
So, with all these notions clear, I need to rant about their portray in fictions. How often are they done right? Why do we tend to see so-called bipolar characters who are actually unipolar depressive? Worse, where a trickster, sociopath or DID is incorrectly identified as "bipolar" even though he/she/it doesn't have any mood disorder? How often is "mania" an actually mania and not just losing grasp of common sense?
And last but not least, from "not having an issue" to "a lot of issues", it's like this: ideal > normal > organisation > syndrome > disorder. Thought actually syndrome and disorder can be equally bad, it's just that disorder is more precises than syndrome in term of vagueness of symptoms. Ideal, normal and organisation are "sane" and the syndrome and disorder are "mental illness". By illness, it means it results on a dysfunction and/or dysphoria to the subject or people affected by the subject. For this reason homosexuality was once considered a mental illness (it did suck to be a homosexual back then, so the criteria was met). Same with Premenstrual Syndrome. I wonder if pregnancy was on the list too at one point. Of course, homosexuality and PMS are no longer on the DSM.
The DSM-V is in making right now. It is not just a chart for labels and pharmacological companies, but also for awareness of different troubles humans have and to not make the mistake of lumping them all into the same basket again. People complain about DSM being a lot of bullshit, but it is an evolving list that tries to be less full of bullshit.
I hope the understanding of psychology can make humans notice the big pile of common sense sitting in their head and use it. It doesn't look very bright right now with all the psychologists calling each other bullshit, but I'm sure that one day we'll know how to get a healthier mind and do it. Right?
Borderline is an organisation, a syndrome or a disorder of mood and relationships. It is about this emptiness in the heart that makes one needs a another person to fill in that void and regulate one's emotions. But the impulsive nature of the borderline makes this relationship full of tension and chaos. This results in many symptoms, the most important of them made in criteria for the DSM.
1. Frantic efforts to avoid being abandoned. The rejection can be real or imaginary. Side symptom to this criterion: paranoia about being abandoned. The efforts are not passive, but often with violence and vengeance. This violence can be towards the other (the object of attachment), others (as in a person outside their relationship) or towards self. Self-mutilation is not included in this criterion.
^This one is usually portrayed rather well in fictions. You can't do this one wrong. It's called a yandere in Japan I believe.
2. Unstable, intense and polarised interpersonal relationships. This means one minute the borderline considers his or her or hir object of affection a god and a perfect being, and next minute he/she/zie would call the same person a worthless piece of shit.
^Sometimes used in fiction.
3. Same thing as (2) but applied to self. Unstable and polarised perception of one's own identity. Tend to have many identities that identify as the same person, but have vastly different perception of self and/or behaviors. The change seems to be a mechanism of adaptation that changes according to the situation the person is in. (Can be cracked via projective tests because they don't know the good or the expected answer.)
^This is sometimes called a Stepford Smiler on TV Tropes.
4. Lack of control in at least two domains that can be harmful to the subject. It is a habit that the subject does to seek pleasure and maybe regulation of his/her/hir emotions. Can be chronic or in reaction to a chronic pain. Does not include self-mutilation, gambling or kleptomania.
^This is where I start to complain. This criterion can be anything that's harmful and chronic and isn't the 3 exceptions above. But in movies, it's almost always sex and drugs (legal like alcohol or illegal like heroine). The criterion includes driving like crazy, shopping like crazy (not the way normal shopping-a-holics are doing it; here it's really pathological, like getting bankrupt by doing it all the time and it's not even things you need), eating like crazy, doing sports like crazy, getting pets like crazy so the room's filled with cats or tanks with fish or snakes, writing porn like crazy (no, fanfiction writers, yours are not pathological... I hope), drawing like crazy (no, artists, you're probably fine, it has to be harmful like drawing all over one's walls or something, like de Goya's Black Paintings probably... I call it harmful because he was probably ruminating the black thoughts by looking at them everyday, the paintings serving as dark remainders to self instead of detaching the traumatic memories) or maybe even blogging like crazy. Why is that it's always sex and drugs in movies? I understand that a lot of them did have sex problems, but doesn't shopping sound more usual than doing drugs? Maybe drinking is common enough, but there are just so many ways that borderline people can be borderline in this criterion and most movies only do sex, drinking and drugs. Heck, so many people do illegal car races and this can be this criterion if they have another addiction like drinking. (No, having one criterion doesn't make one borderline. Usually normal people have one or two borderline symptoms in less severe or less chronic way. This is one of the reasons why this is called borderline. It's borderline between non-functional and functional, socially accepted and not accepted.)
5. Threats or actual auto-mutilation or suicide attempts. This is in about 75% of the borderline patients. Usually part of frantic efforts to retain someone or as a call of help and attention.
^Movie makers tend to remember this one. Guess it's because of the "attractiveness" of blood. Or the emotional impact.
6. Unstable mood. Changes are fast and intense. Hardest criterion to work with.
^Sometimes happen in movies, but it's often justified (as in the other person was being a colossal douche) so not this criterion.
7. Chronic feeling of emptiness.
^Poets of a certain type seem to be always equipped with this criterion.
8. Intense, excessive, uncontrollable anger. Can be inappropriate (as in over-reacting).
^This overlaps with so many other things that it's often not written as part of a borderline character.
9. Paranoiac or dissociative symptoms.
^What does this even mean? It can mean imagining that someone is about to leave you, is cheating on you, or that someone is out to kill you, feeling strange or even losing track of time. I lose track of time a lot, especially when surfing on the Internet, so I feel dissociative already. When I wake up in the morning, many times I'm not sure that time it is and need to check the clock. Ok, enough sarcasm, but this criterion is vague. It should be two criteria, not one. Usually in movies it's the paranoia aspect, usually about a lover cheating on or about to leave the borderline and/or the borderline fearing that others are out to humiliate or kill the subject. It's hard to see movies that explore the dissociative side, as in feeling that the world is unreal or strange, having almost an out-of-body experience, seeing self as a stranger or lose track of time.
Maybe it's just me who doesn't know what being borderline is like because I'm not a psychologist and will probably not become one, but is it just me or it seems that movie makers usually just pick whichever symptoms that look more "exciting" and patch them up to sell? We have non-angry borderline like Kiki from Borderline (2008) and we have the crazier type like the woman from Liaison Dangereuse, but it seems that the current image of borderline in cinema is a clingy woman with relationship issues. Yes, borderline is a relationship issue, but it is also a mood issue and a self-control issue. There is great overlap between borderline and unipolar major depression, borderline and post-traumatic stress, dysthymia (it's like unipolar major depression, but less intense and longer) and substance abuse. Depression and dysthymia are not only about a depressive mood, but also of anhedonia, the incapacity to experience pleasure even in something that usually pleases the subject. Most movies show the depressive mood by having the character feel sad and lonely and because of this go do their bad habit for pleasure, get the short-term pleasure, but fall back to sad and lonely after. If the character was really in the clinical depression phase, not even the bad habit will give him or her pleasure. The borderline would do it and immediately not feel the pleasure. This is implied sometimes, but more often the movie would go "Heaven with you, Hell without you" route instead.
Oh well, most movies are not educational material anyway.
How many people actually know what "mania" means? And "bipolar"?
Mania is the opposite of depression. It means that a person is overwhelmed with energy and confidence. Sadly, humankind isn't good with the feeling of power, so many clinically manic* persons would do crazy things that get themselves or others in trouble and require to be locked up. I'm sure that many people who are manic would just say "This means I can finish writing my 500,000,000 words novel!", "I can paint the greatest painting of all times and spaces!" or "Hey! I feel like a god today! If I'm that powerful, then I should do a Glee marathon tonight because fuck jobs and food, I can watch TV all night." But they won't even be diagnosed in the first place. Those who get caught are the ones who try to stop a moving train while naked or something.
*(both "maniac" and "manic" are adj. of mania, but because of long history of "maniac" being used for "crazy people" they are not that interchangeable anymore and I will try to use "manic" only to avoid confusion)
Mania is a state. The person experience mania is much more pumped and confident than his/her/hir normal state. There is also an implication of lack of control. A person who is always hot-blooded and over-confident is called a hot-blooded idiot (not a clinical term). Clinically it's another thing. Some personality organisation/symdrome/disorder if there is one.
Bipolar means, as the word would imply, moving between two extremes. It means that the person will sometimes feel depressed, sometimes feel full of energy and ultra-confident and sometimes fill both at the same time (it's called a mixed state). If a person only feels one, then the person is unipolar, not bipolar. And bipolar is not about having two personalities, that is DID, short for Dissociative Identity Disorder.
And schizophrenia and DID are not the same thing at all. Schizophrenia is about hallucinations. DID is about a lack of integrity in one's identities. A person with schizophrenia has only one personality. All the hallucinations are others, if they are persons. A DID has many identities and they are all him/her/hir, but at the same time not because each as its own consciousness (as many consciousness as the number of identities). A normal person with many identities is usually not DID. It's DID only if there's more than one consciousness. So when you see someone make a sculpture with three people on it and call it the three aspects of himself/herself, it's not DID, just a poet/artist's thing. And compartmentalisation.
So, with all these notions clear, I need to rant about their portray in fictions. How often are they done right? Why do we tend to see so-called bipolar characters who are actually unipolar depressive? Worse, where a trickster, sociopath or DID is incorrectly identified as "bipolar" even though he/she/it doesn't have any mood disorder? How often is "mania" an actually mania and not just losing grasp of common sense?
And last but not least, from "not having an issue" to "a lot of issues", it's like this: ideal > normal > organisation > syndrome > disorder. Thought actually syndrome and disorder can be equally bad, it's just that disorder is more precises than syndrome in term of vagueness of symptoms. Ideal, normal and organisation are "sane" and the syndrome and disorder are "mental illness". By illness, it means it results on a dysfunction and/or dysphoria to the subject or people affected by the subject. For this reason homosexuality was once considered a mental illness (it did suck to be a homosexual back then, so the criteria was met). Same with Premenstrual Syndrome. I wonder if pregnancy was on the list too at one point. Of course, homosexuality and PMS are no longer on the DSM.
The DSM-V is in making right now. It is not just a chart for labels and pharmacological companies, but also for awareness of different troubles humans have and to not make the mistake of lumping them all into the same basket again. People complain about DSM being a lot of bullshit, but it is an evolving list that tries to be less full of bullshit.
I hope the understanding of psychology can make humans notice the big pile of common sense sitting in their head and use it. It doesn't look very bright right now with all the psychologists calling each other bullshit, but I'm sure that one day we'll know how to get a healthier mind and do it. Right?
