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Analysis of the Portrayal of Borderline Personality Disorder in Fatal Attraction

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Analysis of the Portrayal of Borderline Personality Disorder in Fatal Attraction Running head: BORDERLINE PERSONALITY DISORDER ANALYSIS 1 Analysis of the Portrayal of Borderline Personality Disorder in Fatal Attraction Jonny Van Luven Loyola Marymount University BORDERLINE PERSONALITY DISORDER ANALYSIS 2 Fatal Attraction is a film about a short affair between a married man, Dan Gallagher, and a single woman, Alex Forrest, that turns dangerous when Alex becomes too attached and threatens Ben and his family. The film takes place in what was modern time when it was released, 1987. Dan and Alex first meet at a company party and talk briefly, but they do not really get to know each other until a few days later when they get a drink together to avoid the rain. Dan’s wife, Beth, and daughter, Ellen, are away for the weekend, so Dan spends the night with Alex. He ends up staying two nights with her that weekend because when he tries to leave she becomes upset, rips his shirt, and cuts her wrists to get him to stay. Dan leaves the next day thinking the affair is over. Unexpectedly, she shows up to his work to reconcile, but he tells her it is not a good idea to continue seeing each other. This bothers Alex, and she begins calling him repeatedly at work and at home, eventually telling him that she loves him and she is pregnant. Dan tells her to get an abortion, but Alex insists that he take responsibility, as she is keeping the baby. She sends Dan a cassette tape, in which she goes from saying she needs him in her life to saying she hates him and proceeds to verbally abuse him. She puts acid on Dan’s car, stalks him at home, and a few days later kills Ellen’s pet rabbit and puts it in a boiling pot on their stove. Dan gives up and tells his wife everything that has happened with Alex, including the affair, and calls Alex with his wife to tell her that she knows. Later, Alex picks Ellen up from school and takes her to an amusement park before she drops Ellen off at home. Dan goes to Alex’s apartment and attacks her, choking her almost to death, and Alex tries to stab him with a knife. Dan leaves her apartment, and later, Alex sneaks into Dan’s home and tries to kill Beth with a knife. Dan and Beth fight off Alex, and the film ends with Beth shooting and killing Alex. It is apparent that Alex was suffering from a mental illness that caused her to behave the way that she did. Alex’s behaviors and symptoms best fit the diagnosis of Borderline Personality BORDERLINE PERSONALITY DISORDER ANALYSIS 3 Disorder (BPD) according to The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (5th ed.; American Psychiatric Association, 2013). Alex’s behaviors throughout the film show a pattern of instability of interpersonal relationships, affects, and marked impulsivity (American Psychiatric Association, 2013). This analysis will explain in detail how Alex meets the required criteria of five or more symptoms for BPD. Just two days after meeting Dan, Alex becomes visibly distressed when Dan tries to go home: aggressively ripping his shirt to try to prevent him from getting dressed and demanding that he stay with her. This extreme behavior foreshadows her upcoming frantic efforts to avoid Dan abandoning her, which is one of the possible symptoms for BPD (American Psychiatric Association, 2013). For the remainder of the film, she goes to great lengths to get Dan to leave his family for her, becoming increasingly more distressed. Another portrayal of this behavior is when Dan has his number changed because Alex will not stop calling his house. Alex first unsuccessfully yells at the operator to give her Dan’s new number, and goes to his home to act as a potential buyer. Alex risked spending time with Dan’s wife and lied about being interested in buying the house because she wanted to get their contact information. Alex needed his phone number because that was her way of staying connected with him, and without it, she would be closer to losing him. The film ends with her breaking into Dan’s home and trying to kill his wife, as a sort of last chance to have Dan for herself. This shows that Alex will stop at nothing to be with Dan, even if it means murdering his wife. Alex clearly shows the first possible criterion for BPD of going through frantic efforts to avoid abandonment. Another symptom Alex could possibly the criteria for is a pattern of unstable and intense interpersonal relationships that fluctuate between extremes of idealization and devaluation (American Psychiatric Association, 2013). Alex’s relationship with Dan can easily be seen as BORDERLINE PERSONALITY DISORDER ANALYSIS 4 unstable and fluctuating between high and low extremes. One example of an extreme idealization is when she tells Dan she loves him, even though she only had spent two full days with him. Then she fluctuates down to devaluation when she sends Dan a cassette tape with a recording of her. In this recording, Alex tells Dan that she hates him and calls him vulgar names repeatedly. Alex goes from the high of love to the low of hate in just a few days. The film gives no information about Alex’s past relationships, but she is single from the start and 36 years old. She tells Dan she had a bad miscarriage a year earlier, but the man is completely out of the picture for the film. Her being single at her age could be due to a number of non-related factors, but there is also the significant possibility that it is due to her not being able to have a healthy relationship with others. We never see Alex with any of her own friends, which may be because she does not have any. The unstable nature of Alex’s relationships may be pushing others away from her. While there is not enough information to say that she shows a pattern of unstable and intense interpersonal relationships, the unstable nature of her relationship with Dan makes this symptom worth noting. Another common symptom of BPD is affective instability and reactivity of mood. A study conducted by Reisch, Ebner-Priemer, Tschacher, Bohus, and Linehan (2008) examined the fluctuation of emotions in patients with BPD. The researchers had a group of BPD patients and healthy participants self-report their emotions four times an hour for 24 hours. The results showed that the healthy participants reported more instances of feeling joy and interest, while the BPD patients reported more anxiety and sadness. The BPD patients also frequently switched from anxiety to sadness, anxiety to anger, and sadness to anxiety (Reisch et al., 2008). Alex’s emotions in the film frequently switch similarly to this study. An example of this when Dan tries to leave after their second day spent together. Alex, as said before, rips his shirt to not let him get BORDERLINE PERSONALITY DISORDER ANALYSIS 5 dressed and then yells at him to get out of her apartment. As he gets close to the front door, Alex comes out of her room and calmly asks him to say bye nicely, even suggesting they should be friendly. She then starts crying, and when Dan hugs her, she starts to kiss him passionately. This wide display of emotions shows how quickly Alex can fluctuate between anxiety, anger, and sadness. The immediacy of her response to Dan also leaving shows how reactive her mood is. A slightly upsetting event can cause her to experience a variety of different feelings. The reactivity of Alex’s mood leads her to have inappropriate expressions of anger, another possible symptom of BPD (American Psychiatric Association, 2013). Some examples of this would be when Alex verbally abused Dan on the cassette tape recording and when she killed his daughter’s pet rabbit. In both of these cases, Alex was angry with Dan for rejecting her and trying to keep her away. She was unable to deal with her anger in a healthy way and resorted to abuse and killing an animal. Alex’s expressions of anger also lead to violence against Dan, which is common according to a study done by Ehrensaft, Cohen, and Johnson (2006). In this longitudinal study, the researchers found that borderline personality disorder symptoms in an individual’s early 20’s predicted later violence towards that individual’s partner (Ehrensaft, Cohen, & Johnson, 2006). This association is found in film, as Alex physically fought Dan three times: twice at her apartment and again at the end of the film when she tried to kill his wife. Her tendency to physically fight with Dan illustrates her inability to control her anger or express it in healthy ways. Aside from inappropriate expressions of anger, Alex’s affective instability and reactivity of mood may be the cause of another symptom she experiences: recurrent self-mutilating behaviors. In the scene previously described where she rips Dan’s shirt and yells at him to leave, Dan leaves her room and she comes back out after him with her wrists cut. This self-mutilating BORDERLINE PERSONALITY DISORDER ANALYSIS 6 behavior is seen again at the end of the film when she tries to kill Dan’s wife. As she is talking to Beth and getting more agitated, she starts to slice her leg with the knife. Both of these scenes where she cuts herself are during times when she is highly emotional, so the cutting is most likely a way for her to cop with all the negative emotions she is experiencing.
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