Battle Damaged Darth Vader

Diagnosis Anakin Skywalker

by Carolyn Kaufman, PsyD

A group of French researchers have proposed that Anakin Skywalker had borderline personality. This article examines why, with the evidence for and against such a diagnosis.

WHAT borderline personality disorder?

Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) is essentially an inability to modulate (manage) the emotion, which means that all the emotions come out much stronger than the average person - especially the negative ones. Because most of them were raised in unhealthy, abusive situations, people do not tend to borderline health have coping mechanisms, which means they live many difficult emotions. Anger and depression are two of their most common emotional states. The internal chaos is so strong that many self-harm (cutting, burning or deliberately harm themselves) in an attempt to get the pain to a physical form.
Split

If the first mark of BPD is self-harm, the second is "splitting". When children are small, they pass through a stage where the "good" mother (or "good" Daddy) and they like the "bad" mom (dad), they want to quarrel with two different people. Most people eventually integrate the two and come to understand that you can love and hate someone at the same time. People with BPD continue to divide adulthood, which means they rank other people who belong on a pedestal and those they hate. And they can change people from one class to another very quickly.

People with BPD are often frantic to have someone else to deal with all that emotional overload for them, which can be exhausting for the other person. They will do anything to cling to the person - scream, cry, beg, threaten to kill themselves (or make an attempt), or use other methods of manipulation.
Controversy

BPD is a controversial diagnosis, though. Feminist therapists and institutions tend to feel very strongly not to diagnose anyone BPD. They believe that the symptoms are actually a sign of post-traumatic stress and that referring to someone as "borderline" is to stigmatize rather than addressing the problem. (Especially as some therapists do not want to work with BPD - is probably the hardest thing to handle because customers BPD as needed.)

Anakin Symptoms

So what about we meet Anakin in Star Wars episodes I, II and III?

Diagnosis of works, at least for the episodes, if you spin to the right.

Anakin is particularly strong negative reactions to a variety of events, which could probably be due to an inability to cope with unpleasant feelings they provoke. He certainly hard to take criticism of Obi-Wan and his ourburst Tuskan in the camp after watching her mother die is extreme: he goes berserk and kills everyone. Then when he sees Padme it fails, saying: "I killed ... I killed them all ... even women and children ... "

Padme tends to regulate emotion for him, and therefore he is on a pedestal ... until the end of Episode III, where she confronts her movement toward the dark side. In an instant it goes love to try to suffocate to death.
The researchers' criteria

The researchers provide examples for diagnostic criteria they feel fits the behavior of Anakin (favorites).

Criterion 1: frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment

** The fear of losing her mother is the foundation of all his actions. His efforts to save his wife at any price, in the absence of real threat, at the end with him turning to the dark side .**

Why waste the basis of his mother everything?

And art