I totally agree itās fun to look at things we love through various lenses ā death of the author etc.! I will say that having a special interest around abnormal psychology (the word that is strongly preferred over āmental disorderā in the field) as a 14 year old isnāt really comparable to having tertiary education and work experience in the field AND extensive treatment for borderline personality disorder myself LOL.
I think some of this is a generational mismatch; your generation (Iām 25) is generally eager to apply mental health labels to characters (and yourselves) VERY liberally by my standards. Kids love labels: thatās objective fact, and that attachment to them generally diminishes with age as the ideas of ambiguity and difference become less threatening to our social structures and identities.
Iāll also mention that ādiagnosingā leaders/politicians/famous people is frowned upon professionally because itās a) easy to make sensationalized and stigmatizing claims, and b) impossible to be accurate since we arenāt their clinicians, so Iām disinclined from using armchair psych theories about dictators to map onto Jack.
I think itās much more interesting and less encouraging of stereotypy to examine this from the baseline of what healthy human minds (especially those of children, who are already lacking in many of the emotional and behavioral guardrails and foundations adults have) are driven to in intense and abnormal situations and THEN noting undeniable deviations, like with Roger. I personally think itās way more interesting not to box them in with diagnostic or identity-based labels. For example, instead of āRoger is a psychopath,ā Iām inclined to think, āRoger displays violent tendencies and a disregard for othersāwhy?ā without labeling it.
Jack is obviously an extreme case among the boys, but Iām hesitant to call BPD unless I see very obvious diagnostic criteria being met: I can see some, definitely (the hectic, fear-based, manipulative, jealous, controlling behavior that is associated with the worse side of BPD), but it all seems subclinical. I just nothing that is clearly indicative of a personality disorder and not just environment + childhood + being a bossy, privileged little guy in the first place. Plus, one of the core elements of BPD is identity instability, and 12 is just WAY too young to call that out, especially under the circumstances. OCD I donāt see at all; I just see subclinical perfectionism.
But regardless, it is fun to kick about. I could see them, AFTER the island, developing some awful mental health issues. In a forensic class I took for my neuropsych degree, a professor told us to, in cases of adolescent liability, never forget the neurological impediments faced by developing brains and to be careful not to allow kids to convince you theyāre more mature than they are, just for their own safety. This reminds me of thatānot you, but the boys, who want to play act as leaders, when we see the characters drop and all of them crumple back into children at the end when the officer shows up. Man that is so sad. Makes me want to go reread again. š
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