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Don has Borderline Personality Disorder
Throughout this season it has become apparent to me that Don has Borderline Personality Disorder. The key things that "sealed it" for me are:
- inability to form true intimacy with someone; relationships are idealized (think Rachel Menken)
- overwhelming fear of abandonment, usually stemming from childhood trauma (only after she kicked him out did Don admit to treating Betty badly and without respect)
- risky, impulsive behavior with sex and alcohol (and even drugs in one episode)
- projection of their bad behaviors onto other people (accusing Betty of destroying their family and calling HER a whore)
- dissociation and not remembering events, a la "This never happened."
Borderlines always blame someone else for their behavior. They push people away to avoid that person rejecting them first. Last season, when Betty first confronted Don about having an affair with Bobbie Barrett, he kept trying to change the subject and put the blame back on her. She didn't let him. Don has always done what he wanted without considering its impact on others. Borderlines' anger is usually in direct proportion to their sense of shame. Don's outbursts usually followed being called onto the carpet for things.
The official DSM description is:
A pervasive pattern of instability of interpersonal relationships, self-image and affects, as well as marked impulsivity, beginning by early adulthood and present in a variety of contexts, as indicated by five (or more) of the following:[18]
1. Frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment. Note: Do not include suicidal or self-injuring behavior covered in Criterion 5
2. A pattern of unstable and intense interpersonal relationships characterized by alternating between extremes of idealization and devaluation.
3. Identity disturbance: markedly and persistently unstable self-image or sense of self.
4. Impulsivity in at least two areas that are potentially self-damaging (e.g., promiscuous sex, eating disorders, binge eating, substance abuse, reckless driving). Note: Do not include suicidal or self-injuring behavior covered in Criterion 5
5. Recurrent suicidal behavior, gestures, threats or self-injuring behavior such as cutting, interfering with the healing of scars (excoriation) or picking at oneself.
6. Affective instability due to a marked reactivity of mood (e.g., intense episodic dysphoria, irritability or anxiety usually lasting a few hours and only rarely more than a few days).
7. Chronic feelings of emptiness
8. Inappropriate anger or difficulty controlling anger (e.g., frequent displays of temper, constant anger, recurrent physical fights).
9. Transient, stress-related paranoid ideation, delusions or severe dissociative symptoms
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borderline_personality_disorder
You said a mouthful, Nancy in Ohio. But it's Betty who needs a new doctor, according to Don.
Maybe he can get a discount from Joan's husband, Greg, and spend some time on the couch!
Last season there were posts upon posts diagnosing Don. I'm afraid I don't buy this any more than I buy him as a sociopath--which, given the right check-list, he can seem to be as well. The problem with your analysis is that it totally and utterly ignores the fact that this is 1963.
HELLO! That means that people--especially men in this society of advertising--drink a lot more than we do, casually and often. Which means they need not be border-line to do so. It means that they have outdated ideas about women who sleep around being whores. They do not need to be border-line to think this--the whole friggin' world around them thinks this. Everyone in the U.S.A. at that time thinks it, and that includes most women. Welcome to 1963!
I can go on and on and on. Half your diagnosis can work for most of the people on this show and living in the 60's because it was a different culture, a different society. Putting it another way, you can't diagnosis people as pedophiles if the society insists that all girls get married at 13!
So before you go diagnosing the characters, make sure that you separate out all things and anything that might be part of their cultural make up and upbringing--and common to the times in which they lived. Because that's learned behavior and thought processes, not a psychological illness.
test
Sorry, but diagnosing someone based on the DSM is a poor diagnosis.
He's a character for heaven's sake. Does it warrant this much analysis? Enjoy it for what and who it is.
If a little boy is made to know that his mother was a whore, and if his father is a raging angry drunk and a chronic liar and cheat, and if his step mother despises him and constantly criticizes him because her husband went to the whore who bore him and she was made to nurture and rear him, and if another child comes along much more prized than he is, and if the Bible is used to ‘beat’ him, then you get Dick Whitman. His heart is locked up and he hides it behind a concrete wall that nobody can get through. He cannot truly love anyone. He has no sympathy for anyone. His only desire is to escape the terrible pain of his locked heart and to preserve himself from all threats. It was not just cowardice that caused Dick to trade dog tags and become Don. He escaped the war and his history in one motion. And he will react to adversity just like Don does: avoid, deny, divert, deflect, attack, some or all, probably in that order. Only when none of these things work will he give up. Like he did when Betty stood her ground in 3:11. Then he will try to be a sympathetic figure. This conduct does not depend on customs, times or events. It is a way to avoid pain. And a lot of it will be generational. It is catching. Don’s dad was a liar. Don is a liar. His children are liars. That doesn’t mean the kids will be just like Don in the rest of it.
Emotionally Unstable (Borderline) Personality Disorder is a condition characterized by impulsive actions, rapidly shifting moods, and chaotic relationships. The individual usually goes from one emotional crisis to another.
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