Here is a college paper I wrote about BoJack Horseman having BPD for my psychological disorders class about the depictions of mental and mood disorders.
The teacher was an actual clinical psychologist and I got a 100, with the average being an 86% so take that as you will.
A Critique of the Depiction of Borderline Personality Disorder
Of Character “Bojack Horseman” in Netflix’s “Bojack Horseman”
PSYCH-433
By: (You Don’t get to know)
4/3/2024
“BoJack, just stop. You are all the things that are wrong with you. It’s not the alcohol, or the drugs, or any of the shitty things that happened to you in your career, or when you were a kid. It’s you. Alright? It’s you.” (“BoJack Horseman” Episode 310). Although this is something you should never say to someone with any mental illness, it seems to encapsulate what Borderline Personality Disorder and BoJack Horseman’s apparent struggle with it throughout the series. Although an animated“comedy”show about an anthropomorphic horse who was a past star in a 90s sitcom, now living life as a washed-up star may not sound like the greatest representation of Borderline Personality Disorder, throughout the six-season story, we are able to see how BoJack’s relationships can be affected by it, along with items in his past that could have brought it about.
Let’s start with how BoJack fits the DSM description of BPD, and how he might not. The requirements within the DSM require to show 5 (or more) symptoms of 9 presented. These include: Extreme reactions to abandonment, whether real or perceived; a pattern of intense and stormy relationships with family, friends, and loved ones, ranging from idealization to extreme dislike; Impulsive and often dangerous behaviors; Recurring suicidal behaviors or threats, or self harming behavior. Intense and highly changeable moods, Chronic feelings of emptiness; inappropriate or intense anger, and stress-related paranoid thoughts or severe dissociative symptoms. BoJack checks lots of these boxes, so let’s go through each one, and give an example if it applies.
BoJack is incredibly afraid of abandonment. It is shown several times throughout the series that he is scared when people he knows leaves, such as his half-sister Hollyhock, who after trying to distance herself from him tells him that he is forcing himself into her life, as he becomes a professor at the college she attends. However, nothing is more apparent of his fear of abandonment than his relationship with his roommate Todd. He constantly puts him down, as to keep him to stay at his house indefinitely. This is most apparent when Todd presents his Rock-Opera. BoJack, as his friend, tells him, “That was, and I don’t say this lightly, worse than a hundred September 11ths”. However, once the Rock Opera seems like it might be picked up, and Todd might become successful and leave his house, BoJack sabotages Todd’s chances by getting him addicted to a video game he played as a teenager, which makes Todd fail his pitches to possible producers.
BoJack’s stormy relationships are about half of the show and I could likely fill three pages of just this. He has an on-again off-again relationship with his Agent, Princess Carolynn. His relationship with his roommate, Todd, is often broken based on the consequences of his actions, along with those of his friend and ghost-writer Diane. A romantic relationship with a co-star turned rocky when he nearly choked her to death, as she wanted to leave him, and wanted him to stop with substance abuse. Finally, his relationship with what could be considered best friend, Herb Kazzaz, ended with them not speaking for twenty years after Bojack “stabbed him in the back” while not defending him from media heat. Herb was a comedian who helped start BoJack’s successful career, being a writer for the show he starred in, and despite being his best friend, when the media found out that Herb was gay, leading to his removal from the show, BoJack did nothing to stand up for him, because it believed it would affect his professional career.
He has a terrible sense of self, constantly asking himself, “Am I a good person?”, flipping from wanting to be a star and do more shows to rejecting offers, and leaving projects mid-shoot. In season 1, he approaches his friend Diane, asking, “I need you to tell me that I’m a good person. I know that I can be selfish and narcissistic and self-destructive, but underneath all that, deep down, I’m a good person, and I need you to tell me that I’m good, Diane… Tell me, please Diane, tell me that I’m good…”. Along with that, after catching his life-long dream role, of Secretariat, he leaves the film, mid-production to do something else.
His impulsive and dangerous behaviors are one of the most evident. He goes through several “benders” throughout the show, ranging from alcohol to prescription and hard street drugs. He is known as an alcoholic to his friends and even attends rehab (multiple times), which actually lines up with studies. “In men, borderline personality disorder is more likely to co-occur with disorders such as substance abuse” Along with this he has poor spending habits, such as buying a boat, and an entire restaurant when heated.
He has few, though some recurring suicidal behaviors and threats. This is evident through him driving with his eyes closed accelerating on the highway while letting the wheel go, and when he tells a current girlfriend that unless she tells him that she loves him, he’s going to hang himself, albeit in the form of autoerotic asphyxiation. This may be one of the symptoms he shows the least of, however, because although he is depressed throughout much of the show, suicide is never really his answer to it, rather filling his life with drugs and alcohol.
He does have very changeable moods as well. This is often seen through anger, which I will also cover number 8 with this, that he will be fine one minute, then filled with rage the next, such as yelling at someone over muffins in a grocery store, or going on rants when someone puts pressure on him or he doesn’t get what he wants. Very rarely does this turn into physical anger or abuse, most of the time resulting in him taking drugs.
His feelings of emptiness and boredom seem to create tons of his problems. He has the need to fill his life with something, but he doesn’t know what. He sometimes wants to get back into filming shows, but fails to go through with that, and fills his life with whatever he can. He has rewatched his own sitcom several times to deal with this boredom, and his emptiness can be described through his quote, “you’re going to do everything in your power to fill that hole with friends and your career and meaningless sex, but the hole doesn’t get filled. And one day, you’re going to look around and you’re going to realize that everybody loves you, but nobody likes you, and that is the loneliest feeling in the world.” (“Bojack Horseman” 305).
Finally, are stress-related paranoid thoughts or severe dissociative symptoms. This is the entirety of episode 511, “The Show-Stopper”. The entire episode shows BoJack’s inability to discern reality from the TV Show that he is filming. He believes that someone in the real world is out to get him, despite it being a part of the show, and the show continues to flip between parallels of BoJack’s personal life, to the show, highlighting him losing touch with what is real and what is not.
Finally, all of this can be attributed to past trauma and relationship to his parents. His father would constantly avoid him, and when he was around, would verbally abuse him, and was even shown getting him drunk. This is after BoJack walked in on him having an affair with his secretary. Finally, he was very absent from BoJack’s life, reflected in the episode “The View From Halfway Down”. While dreaming about a dinner with important people from his life, his father is absent, and is instead represented by the racehorse “Secretariat”, who BoJack idolized as a child, showing he might have turned to the racehorse as a father figure more than his actual biological father. Even more, his mother, though we aren’t given too much, has also shown BPD symptoms, including heavy drinking, mood swings, and the idea of abandonment, when her mother sort of “left” after receiving a lobotomy. This could point to the biological risk factor of BPD, though his environmental factors are much more readily apparent.
The show, given a whole six seasons, gives great room to show how Bojack Horseman displays Borderline Personality Disorder. Although he is oftentimes depressed, and even empty, I feel the show could more highlight this part of the disorder. It is an animated comedy, it isn’t meant to be a perfect one-to-one, and a person not doing anything doesn’t make for a great show, This could be however because his sadness is often too quickly “resolved” through his anger, or his substance abuse. His self image is also up for scrutiny, because although in the earlier seasons he has a very mixed idea of who he is, he begins to settle down later in the series. Finally, his self-harming behaviors. Although he does self-sabotage through things like drinking and substance abuse, things such as cutting or any others are not as apparent. This is also the case when it comes to suicide, only appearing a handful of times throughout the show. Again, this could be attributed to the fact it’s supposed to be a comedic show, and a whole six seasons about a constantly suicidal person doesn’t sound that entertaining. Overall, given that it’s put into Netflix’s comedy section, “Bojack Horseman” does a great job depicting mental disorders, not just in how they affect a person, but also the people around them.
References
Bob-Waksberg, Raphael. (Executive Producer). (2014-2020). BoJack Horseman [TV series]. Torante Television; Netflix.
Borderline personality disorder. (2011). National Institute of Mental Health, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, National Institutes of Health.
