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Diagnosing Annie Wilkes : Borderline Personality Disorder

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Diagnosing Annie Wilkes: Borderline Personality Disorder Misery What does life with borderline personality disorder look like? A prime example would be Misery by Stephen King, the classic psychological thriller. Annie Wilkes, one of the main characters in the film, exhibits multiple signs and symptoms of having a psychological illness, making her subject to diagnosis. Through Annie’s behavior and emotional instability, it is evident that she has borderline personality disorder. This paper will provide a proper treatment plan and prognosis for her illness. Diagnosing Annie1 Annie displayed many traits and showed many signs that would justify her as having a psychological illness. Throughout the movie, Annie’s character had constant mood swings and outbursts. Her mood would often go from happy and energetic to sad or angry. She started off seemingly friendly and normal. As the movie quickly progressed her friendliness turned to wickedness. In the beginning, the first sign of borderline personality disorder that she displayed was after she convinced Paul to let her read the draft for his new book. She explained that she wasn’t fond of curse words and told Paul that he should take them out. When Paul rejected her suggestion, her persona changed and she became enraged and began screaming, “[A]nd the bank do I tell Mrs. Bollinger, ‘Oh, here's one big bastard of a check, give me some of your Christ-ing money?’ There, look there, see what you made me do,” spilling soup on him (Nicolaides, Reiner, Scheinman, & Stott, 1990). This was an example of her uncontrollable emotions. Alongside uncontrollable emotions, Annie expressed signs of suicide. In one scene she explicitly stated “[N]ow the time has come. I put two bullets in my gun. One for me, and one for you” (Nicolaides et al, 1990). This was in regard to her possibly committing a murder-suicide between she and Paul. Annie went through extreme measures, such as breaking Paul’s ankles and killing the sheriff, to avoid being abandoned by Paul. She also showed signs of dysphoria during the film. For instance, the quote: [T]he rain. Sometimes it gives me the blues. When you first came here, I only loved the writer part of Paul Sheldon. Now I know I love the rest of him,

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