Characters That You Think have BPD

This is just a fun & interpretative thread. Is there any book characters (Or movie characters) that you think are Borderlines? Or any other mental illness?

I personally think that Madame Bovary from the book "Madame Bovary" is a definite Borderline. She cheats impulsively, feels empty inside & tries to fill her emptiness with different lovers, & she impulsively commits suicide with black & white thinking. A typical Borderline.

Also, one could argue that Anna Karenina from the book of her namesake, is a Borderline as well. She commits adultery, feels empty. VERY empty, part of the reason I love the book is because I can relate. & Then she commits suicide when she sees no way out in her black & white thinking. The two characters are fairly similar, although I like Anna better.

Also, Ofelia from Hamlet. One of the easiest characters to interpret as "mad". Some have said she was Bipolar, but she could fit Borderline as well. Borderline's can go into psychosis like she did. Also she fell in depression & let herself die. I will argue that she, too, had the typical Borderline "emptiness".

Back in the olden days, these femmes would be called "hysterics". Borderlines are today's hysterics.

What do you guys think? Am I missing any characters?

Hamlet himself. Beautiful dissociation, splitting, and psychosis.

I elect Jake La Motta, Robert Dinero's character from the movie Raging Bull. He's a sadomasochistic boxer who loves inflicting pain on himself and loves to get punched in the face, and requests his friends and family to hit him. Also, he has extreme anger management problems, hence raging bull, and he has periods of idealization and devaluation about his wife. First he is obsessed with her and falls madly in love with her and then once they get married he starts to abuse her and accuse her of cheating on him. He has paranoid ideation that other men, including his own brother, are sleeping with his wife, so he beats his brother up and punches his wife for her perceived abandonment of him. On the side, since he is a middle weight boxer, he is basically forced to have an eating disorder because he has to constantly stay below a certain weight to keep his title as middle weight champion. When he goes to jail later in the movie, he has a complete emotional breakdown and he obviously emotionally disturbed for the entire movie. Now that's what I call a borderline character, nothing like the cliched women from Girl, Interrupted.

I started a similar thread last week after re-watching Sense & Sensibility for the first time since my dx. Marianne Dashwood most definitely BPD. I would agree that it used to manifest itself as "hysterics".

Nina Sayers in the movie Black Swan. If you havent seen this movie you MUST. It is a perfect Borderline movie. Even the whole theme is Nina trying to dance both the White Swan and the Black Swan. In fact, I think that her mother and the retired older ballerina in the movie are also Borderline, and her teacher is a Narcissist. This is such a great movie depicting a lot of issues with various personality disorders.I love it to death. Its even on my avatar.

The movie Gia with Angelina Jolie. Another really good depiction of a Borderline. Frantic efforts to avoid abandonment are abound, lots of impulsive behavior. Super sad though, but its a true story.

Black Snake Moan movie- I think Christina Ricci's character, Rae has a lot of Borderline characteristics. She's a sex addict, fears abandonment, lashes out in rage.

Fight Club has a lot of "splitting". I know the guy is way more psycho than most Borderlines, but he does dissassociate, split himself, and idealize/devalue his partner, Marla. And Marla herself is a perfect Borderline character.

In Fight Club the main character has Dissociative Identity Disorder, his first personality is depressed and his alter personality is antisocial. It's not the same as BPD because his multiple identity disorder is causing all the problems in the movie.

Dominique Francon in Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead.

artemis08 wrote:Nina Sayers in the movie Black Swan. If you havent seen this movie you MUST. It is a perfect Borderline movie. Even the whole theme is Nina trying to dance both the White Swan and the Black Swan. In fact, I think that her mother and the retired older ballerina in the movie are also Borderline, and her teacher is a Narcissist. This is such a great movie depicting a lot of issues with various personality disorders.I love it to death. Its even on my avatar.

I agree but I also have a suspicion that Nina could have been a Paranoid Schizophrenic. She had a lot of hallucinations & delusions. More than the typical Borderline. But I agree, the movie was amazing!

I don't believe Nina from Black Swan was borderline at all. Watch the movie, she has paranoid schizophrenia, and that illness cancels out any possible borderline pathology. All of her problems were schizophrenic 100%.

Virginia Woolf
Marylin Monroe
( ^ not sure if either are 'confirmed' BPD)

Holly Golightly (from the novella Breakfast at Tiffany's, but not the movie)
Alice/Jane(played by Natalie Portman) in Closer -- anyone else think so??
Claudia in the film Magnolia (i watched this last night and almost shouted BORDERLINE at my laptop )

--i wanna say :
Clementine(Kate Winslet) in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and
Sam(Portman) in Garden State
.... but i really think that's more about connecting with/being told i'm like characters...
i can't think of anything right now with Sam that would meet any criteria... but i haven't seen either film in a while.

mm..that's all i can think of for now.