The Characters Of Personality Disorders In The Movie Mommie Dearest

The causal models that best represent Norma Desmond’s Borderline Personality Disorder abnormality would be the Biological, Sociocultural, and Cognitive-Behavioral model. Firstly, the biological model helps to determine the causal factors as research suggests that genetics play a significant role in BPD as the text supports, “people with BPD often appear to be characterized by lowered functioning of the neurotransmitter serotonin, which is involved in inhibiting behavioral responses” (344). Generally, genetics are a main aspect to BPD, however other models help to identify Desmond’s abnormality such as the sociocultural model, which helps to determine further explanations on how the potential impact

Psychological disorders are very real and present in many people we come in contact with daily, however, are very rarely talked about. Learning about these disorders can help us to understand others and ourselves better by telling us why we do and think the things we do. One effective way that we can observe and learn about psychological disorders is through movies. “Mommie Dearest” was directed by Frank Perry. It is centered around the actress Joan Crawford, who suffered from various psychological disorders. Joan’s daughter, Christina, wrote a book about her mother and her many problems and it was later turned into a movie. It is very effective to use movie analysis as a way of learning, especially in psychology, because it provides a great way to observe without distractions. When you’re looking at disorders, it’s difficult to find a person who has many of these disorders and will allow you to observe them. Psychological disorders can be split into two major groups, personality disorders and mood disorders. Personality disorders are patterns of traits that can get in the way of your social or work life and may interrupt the individual’s normal lifestyle. Mood disorders are inconsistent and unreliable changes in mood by the affected individual. (Rathus, 1998). With all of this being said, it brings me to my point that I will be talking about for the rest of this essay. Joan Crawford demonstrates the personality disorders of histrionic, narcissism, and OCPD. When it comes to mood disorders, Joan demonstrates bipolar disorder.

Throughout the movie Joan Crawford shows many examples of being bipolar. Bipolar is a disorder in which a person’s mood changes from depression to elation and back again. (Rathus 2010). Joan Crawford shows this in her movie more than one time, the first time she shows it she finds out that she has just received the role she was hoping to get and then finds her daughter playing with her makeup. When she finds her daughter imitating her and she freaks out because she doesn’t like her acting like her so she instantly goes from excitement to almost killing her daughter and cutting her hair all the way off. That is a clear example of bipolar because she starts out very joyful and ends up very angry. In the movie, she goes outside to thank all of her fans for receiving the award and it very proud and happy then goes up to see her daughter and finds out she has a wire hanger and beats her with the wire hanger. This is an example because she is very happy then instantly almost kills her daughter. Those are the two most supporting examples that I found from the movie and they show the example of bipolar very good.

One can point out many factors could have led or contributed to Marilyn Monroe being diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder. As stated in her back ground history she had many stressful events throughout her childhood and adult life. Monroe’s childhood was filled with poverty. The simple fact of Monroe’s mother being diagnosed with a mental illness posed a greater treat of her

Throughout life, people will meet others who are different from them. People have different backgrounds, ethnicities, lifestyles, etc. Everyone is unique in their own way. In some situations, people will act very different, according to their personality. Some people are not patient and will react angrily to certain things, while others will act calmly. For example, a person with a narcissistic personality disorder, will think that they always need attention. They also may be preoccupied with fantasies of their own success, power, intelligence, or beauty. Joan Crawford (Faye Dunaway) is someone who looks as if she has this

There are two different kind of disorders, personality disorders and psychological disorders. Psychological disorders are illnesses that an individual experiences as episodes. Personality disorders are enduring traits that are major components of the individual's personality (Rathus, 2010). No matter what kind of disorder a person may possess their lives are affected everyday by them, it takes over their body and consumes them as a person. Disorders are often misunderstood. You do not have the ability to make a split second decisions and then continue life without that disorder, it will take lots of counseling. While we are not trained psychologist everyone can learn or identify disorders in popular movies or television shows. In the movie, Mommie Dearest, directed by Frank Perry, Joan Crawford possesses several of these disorders including bipolar, borderline personality disorder, obsessive compulsive personality disorder and narcissistic.

Many people believe that psychological disorders are unique, however they are becoming a more common, in fact around 26.2 percent of people suffer from a psychological disorder in a given year. Psychological disorders are behavior patterns or mental processes that cause serious personal problems and interferes with daily life. Disorder types expand beyond only psychological, many other disorders fall under the category of being personality disorders, which is defined by, patterns of uncompromising traits that affect and disrupt one’s ability in everyday life. When looking at disorders it is important to be able to dysgenic the difference between psychological and personality disorders. Psychological disorders are illnesses a person undergoes as an “episode,” however, personality disorders constant traits that play an important role when developing a person’s personality. One way to identify these types of disorders is through movies. For example, the film Mommie Dearest, directed by Frank Perry is a story told from the perspective of Joan Crawford’s adoptive daughter, Christina. Joan Crawford expresses many disorders shown throughout the movie, while Christina displays how these experiences affect her life. Throughout the movie Joan Crawford demonstrates psychological and personality disorders of, bipolar, obsessive compulsive disorder, narcissistic, and histrionic.

Cindy shares that her mother was the opposite of her father in that she was mean and abusive; suffering from bipolar disorder. Cindy claims that the maternal side of her family suffers from bipolar disorder, affecting her grandmother, mother, sister and half-sister. This claim makes Cindy predisposition to bipolar (heredity). Cindy reports that she has encountered physical altercations with both her daughters; one altercation resulted in her being arrested and incarcerated for three days.

Black Swan is a fantastic movie that portrays perfectionism and how a person feels when they have a distorted image of their body. The movie depicts a psychosis disorder. There are psychological issues that the main character encounters, such as not only eating disorders and self grievance behaviors. Although Black Swan has been known to impeccably show the the severe struggle of a person with a psychological illness, it always brings awareness to many stigma's that are connected with mental illness, media and other important points about mental illness that we have discussed throughout this semester, including how the media also effects body images. This paper will primarily focus on Nina's disorders and how they are portrayed in a film. Nina's abnormal behaviors such as eating disorders, schizophrenia and obsessive compulsive disorder will be discussed in order to diagnose her symptoms.

Introduction: I have chosen this subject in order to maybe understand it better, in a way that hopefully it becomes easier for me to deal with it, this condition to which I have become very familiar with, not because I study it but because I am one who suffers from such disorder; this is what I call the side of the coin that no one see. Although I don’t think is such a bad thing, some have given this disorder a serious bad image to which as usual the media have distortion its image to a point where we have become and sometimes feel as if we were in a glass box. By first hand I have experienced how for example a potential job interview changes its trajectory once is discovered that I might suffer from such disorder.

According to the American Journal of Psychiatry, the essential feature of narcissistic personality disorder is a pervasive pattern of grandiosity, need for admiration, and lack of empathy, beginning by early adulthood and present in a variety of contexts. (Caligor) The grandmother has a grandiose sense of self-importance, in her eyes she is the pure example of a “true lady” and how one should act. She is preoccupied with fantasies of power, brilliance, beauty and ideal love. She believes that she is special and requires special admiration.

While there is no one proper way to deal with the death of a child and the attempted suicide of another child, the behaviors of the family members in the aftermath can provide great insight into functioning of the family. In chapter two, Turner and West (2013) discuss the dialectic approach to family communication, and in the film, Ordinary People, we encounter a dysfunctional family that deals with contradictory impulses that both drive apart and pull together the family. It is useful to analyze the Jarretts from this approach because each member has these impulses that impact their relationship to other members that cause instances of change and stability in the family over time.

Nonetheless, learning how to cope with your and your peers or patient’s personality disorders is crucial. My textbook, Psychology, explains the different types of personality perspectives and how to identify them. For example, some of these include “biological”, “behavioral”, and “psychoanalytic”. Additionally, in the journal article “An integrated approach to treatment of patients with personality disorders.” explains different methods for helping patients with personality disorders. This is helpful because it gives me more background on treating patients in

The film All About My Mother is a drama which sees a mother, Manuela, on a search to find the father of her son. This journey comes after her son, who has always desired to meet his father, was tragically hit by a car and killed while chasing down actresses of the play A Streetcar Named Desire. This play, which Manuela was an actress in twenty years earlier, becomes small piece of her son she holds, since it was the last thing she did with him before he was killed. This desire she feels to be complete is a trait which recurs in a few other characters during the story. The characters that the desire to feel complete is most shown in is Manuela, Esteban (her son), and Huma.

Shutter Island is a film depicting several of the many facets of Abnormal Psychology as defined and studied over the course of this term. Several of the concepts discussed in our lectures and demonstrated during our classroom time were evident and vividly depicted in the film including personality disorders past and present; stress and anxiety disorders; psychosis, and mood disorders. There were others subtly displayed in the film however, these listed were of primary focus and coincidence most closely with our study this term. While focusing more on the abnormal, Shutter Island