So, recently I got into Arcane and I've been reading a lot of Arcane meta, namely on the psychology of Jinx and how she displays a lot of symptoms relating to having BPD and the more I began to read up on and do research on the whole topic of BPD, the more I saw how it could also apply to Wheatley.
Note that I am not a medical professional, all of this is speculation based off of the research I've done and I am not doing this to bash anyone with the disorder either but to merely explore Wheatley's psychology and how it affects him. Because from what I've seen, Wheatley surely seems to display many signs of having BPD.
Now what is BPD?
BPD, otherwise known as Borderline Personality Disorder is, as Wikipedia puts it, "A personality disorder characterized by a long-term pattern of unstable interpersonal relationships, distorted sense of self, and strong emotional reactions."
The criteria for a BPD diagnosis go as follow:
1. Frantic efforts to avoid real or perceived abandonment.
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 2 areas that are potentially self-damaging / reckless behavior (e.g., impulsive or uncontrollable spending, unsafe sex, substance use disorders, reckless driving, binge eating).
5. Recurrent suicidal behaviour, gestures or threats, or self-mutilating behaviour.
6. Affective instability due to a marked reactivity of mood.
7. Chronic feelings of emptiness.
8. Inappropriate, intense anger or difficulty controlling anger
9. Transient, stress-related paranoid ideation or severe dissociative symptoms.
Now, not all of these apply to Wheatley, but the diagnosis for BPD requires that at least 5 out of 9 of this specific criteria be met. So let's go through them one by one.
1. Frantic efforts to avoid real or perceived abandonment. ✅
Now, this one is rather subtle, so it's easy to miss unless you play close attention to Wheatley's dialogue, but Wheatley is someone who feels like others will abandon him if they declare him to be unhelpful or useless to them. This is shown during Chapter 5: The Escape when Chell leaves the turret control room after removing the template turret.
Obviously, since Chell isn't saying anything to him, he has to try to figure out what she's doing and reassure himself that she's just thought up an idea and that she's going to come straight back. But he doesn't know that for sure, so he gets anxious the further away she goes.
"I'm actually over here still thinking really hard!" Like he's trying to convince her not to abandon him by reiterating the fact that he's useful and that he's still trying to help her out. This is a VERY subtle example of Wheatley's separation anxiety but it is there. He's afraid of Chell deeming him useless and abandoning him.
And while this is a subtle example, it later becomes obvious during the boss battle when Wheatley says this:
"And another thing! You never caught me... I told you I could DIE falling off that rail and you didn't catch me... Didn't even TRY. Oh! It's all becoming clear to me now. Find some dupe to break you out of cryosleep, give him some sob story about escaping to the surface, squeeze him for information on where to find a portal gun, then, when he's- when he's no more use to you, he has a little ACCIDENT, doesn't he? 'Falls' off his management rail, doesn't he?"
So Wheatley does genuinely feel like he will be abandoned by his favorite person if they no longer deem him as being useful to them. And Chell is Wheatley's favorite person.
Now this is something that's prominent in people with BPD. It's idealization and an obsessive sort of love or admiration for a single person, which you would refer to as an "FP" or a "Favorite person".
People with BPD will quickly latch onto a single person and become very attached to them. Often, this is a person that the individual with BPD will invest all of their time and energy into and become very emotionally dependent on. People with BPD often feel like they can't function without this person and they are in constant need of their approval, or their attention or their time in order to remain functional, sometimes even changing themselves in order to try and get their approval.
Now, Wheatley's entire reason for wanting to help Chell out in the first place was for the sake of self preservation.
He needed someone to help him escape and Chell was the last person left. Unbeknownst to him, however, she is the Legendary Human that defeated GLaDOS. The Legendary Human who's story was passed down from core to core throughout the years after the events of Portal 1.
He clearly had no clue that it was Chell. Just like many stories and urban legends, certain details become lost to time. What is true, though is the fact that Wheatley latches onto Chell after this. Because remember: His entire reason for helping her out in the first place was to escape a nuclear core meltdown. However, GLaDOS fixes that.
So there's no longer any need to want to escape. Wheatley could very well just mind his own business and stay away from GLaDOS and he would be perfectly fine. But he comes back to try and rescue Chell.
For what reason? Because her story resonated with him. It resonated with him a lot.
Ignoring everything else that's going on in these two pictures, these are the lines that stand out to me:
"The escape lift. Just there. Come on. The one you risked your life to get to. So you could escape certain death. No rush."
"Find some dupe to break you out of cryosleep, give him some sob story about escaping to the surface,"
Now, obviously, Chell hasn't uttered a single word to Wheatley the entire time, but in his heightened emotional state, he's feeling very on edge and overwhelmed and he's misremembering the details of what truly happened. His emotions are clouding his judgement. And, as stated on Wikipedia, difficulty in recalling specific details of past events is yet another symptom found in people with BPD.
"A 1999 study reported that the specificity of autobiographical memory was decreased in BPD patients. The researchers found that decreased ability to recall specifics was correlated with patients' levels of dissociation."
But the fact that Wheatley remembers it as "Some sob story" means that from the bits and pieces he could deduce about Chell's entire history with GLaDOS, he sees it as worthy of sympathy. He listens behind the panels to how GLaDOS belittles Chell and he connects with it. He ends up feeling sympathy for her and he wants to help her escape for no benefit of his own. Wheatley choosing to help Chell was a selfless act because it was a spur of the moment decision. He wasn't thinking about himself when he decided he wanted to help Chell... until hours later when he gets cold feet and says this.
But this is just an intrusive thought that pops up as a result of Wheatley's own fear of potentially getting crushed again if GLaDOS catches them. Wheatley just happens to lack a filter when he gets scared or nervous and he ends up blurting out the first thought that comes to mind. He will, in his own words "Ramble out of fear" sometimes.
On another note, Impulsive behavior and intrusive thinking is get another symptom that is quite prevalent in people with BPD.
But, aside from his little scare, Wheatley has no real intention to abandon Chell or throw her under the bus.
And he hopes that she doesn't either.
2. A pattern of unstable and intense interpersonal relationships. ✅
So when you're playing Portal 2, you may think that this is the part where Wheatley turns on you.
But that's not quite the case. Here's still on your side and he still cares about you, but he's losing focus on the task at hand and shifting gears as he quickly becomes addicted to the euphoria the mainframe gives him.
And what's funny is that he actually wants Chell to stay with him. If he just wanted power, he could have stayed on the chassis and let Chell go free, but he wants her to stay with him because he's still attached to her, as he notes during the boss battle:
"Oh, remember the time I took over the facility? Greatest. Moment. Of my life, but YOU? Just wanted to leave! Didn't want to share in my success... Well, so you know, I would be happy for you if you succeeded... Apart from right now, obviously."
He just impulsively changed his objective and he wanted Chell to be with him so that they could enjoy defeating GLaDOS together without having to leave the comfortable euphoria of the chassis.
But what causes him to turn against Chell is this:
"Oh really. That's what THE TWO OF YOU you think, is it?"
Notice how he immediately accuses Chell of siding with GLaDOS against him. This is what causes the split. And while it seems abrupt, we need to also take this into consideration:
What the chassis does is that it intensifies a core's already existing personality traits. So, while Wheatley may have just been anxious and unsure before, being in the chassis makes it far more difficult for him to try to mask or regulate his emotions.
We already knew from the turret control center that Wheatley was already anxious of Chell potentially abandoning him. Pair that with the fact that Chell failed a basic trust exercise by not catching him when he disengaged from his rail, and Wheatley has reason to not fully trust Chell or to at the very least doubt what her intentions are with him.
What Wheatley displays here is something known in BPD as "Splitting". Here is how wikipedia describes the phenomena:
"People with BPD can be very sensitive to the way others treat them, by feeling intense joy and gratitude at perceived expressions of kindness, and intense sadness or anger at perceived criticism or hurtfulness. People with BPD often engage in idealization and devaluation of others, alternating between high positive regard for people or great disappointment in them. Their feelings about others often shift from admiration or love to anger or dislike after a disappointment, a threat of losing someone, or a perceived loss of esteem in the eyes of someone they value. This phenomenon is sometimes called splitting.
People with BPD often tend to view things in black and white extremities. So someone that a person with BPD heavily idolizes and considers important to them can be the absolute image of perfection in their eyes but as soon as that person does something that causes the person with BPD to feel hurt or paranoid or insecure about them self or their relationship, suddenly the person with BPD will split on them and start to devalue them as a person.
Oftentimes this is done as a coping mechanism to deal with the hurt or perceived rejection or abandonment.
And by far, the BIGGEST example of Wheatley's splitting and devaluation of Chell is his entire boss battle rant as he accuses her of silently judging him and not caring about him. He even rages about how much he hates her as well. This is pretty much exactly what splitting looks like mixed in with BPD rage and emotional deregulation.
"We've had some times, haven't we? Like that time I jumped off my management rail, not sure if I'd die or not when I did, and all you had to do was catch me? Annnd you didn't. Did you? Ohhhh. You remember that? I remember that. I remember that ALL THE TIME. And we would have talked our way out of it. Except you forgot to tell me you'd MURDERED her. And that she needed you to live, so the only available vent for her rage would be good ol' crushable Wheatley. Yeah. Little details I remember. Easy little tidbits you could have used to save me from getting crushed if you'd cared, which you didn't, obviously. And still do not.
"Am I being too vague? I despise you. I loathe you. You arrogant, smugly quiet, awful jumpsuited MONSTER of a woman! You and your little potato friend. This place would have been a triumph if it wasn't for you!"
"Enough! I told you not to put these cores on me. But you don't listen, do you? Quiet. All the time. Quietly not listening to a word I say. Judging me. Silently. The worst kind."
"And another thing! You never caught me... I told you I could DIE falling off that rail and you didn't catch me... Didn't even TRY."
3. Identity disturbance: markedly and persistently unstable self-image or sense of self. ✅
Where do I even begin with this? Well, first off, it should be obvious that Wheatley hates his intended purpose. And obviously this would cause a disturbance in his identity and sense of self.
Wheatley does not have a stable or a positive sense of self. For his entire life, he has either been treated as some useless moron who can't do anything right or someone who is so forgettable that it's left him feeling tiny and insignificant to everyone around him. Which is indeed how Wheatley feels.
Now imagine being born and your parents name you "Dumbass" and then you go your entire life being called a dumbass by everyone you ever meet. How stable would your sense of identity be?
Every single time Wheatley says his own name, it's in the form of self deprecation.
"I did this! Tiny little Wheatley did this!"
"Oh! Except you forgot to tell me you'd MURDERED her. And that she needed you to live, so the only available vent for her rage would be good old crushable Wheatley.
Even in Tf2, he's still self deprecating.
"Oh, just--make sure you keep a tight grip on me. If you would. Poor, fragile little Wheatley. Easily breakable."
Wheatley has always rejected the idea of being stupid. He has never allowed it to define himself but even so, the ways others have treated him has led to him developing low self esteem and a lack of self worth, feeling like others will only ever look down on him and disregard him as tiny and useless.
No more pictures from this point on because I've gone over the limit, but in The Final Hours of Portal 2, the writers describe Wheatley as being "Bumbling, frantic and not so sure of himself."
When he takes over the facility, he's ecstatic to be this big and important person and finally feeling like he matters and like he has worth, but despite all of his bravado in the chassis, deep down, as we see during the boss battle, he still feels useless.
"Oh, oh! You know what I've just remembered? Football! Kicking a ball around for fun. Cruel, obviously. Humans love it. Metaphor. Should have seen it coming."
4. Impulsivity in at least 2 areas that are potentially self-damaging / reckless behavior (e.g., impulsive or uncontrollable spending, unsafe sex, substance use disorders, reckless driving, binge eating). ✅
GLaDOS: "I know you..."
Wheatley: "Sorry, w- ahah... what?"
GLaDOS: "The engineers tried everything to make me... behave. To slow me down... Once, they even attached an Intelligence Dampening Sphere on me. It clung to my brain like a tumor, generating an endless stream of terrible ideas."
Wheatley: "No! Not listening! Not listening!"
GLaDOS: "It was YOUR voice."
Wheatley: "No! Y- No! You're LYING! You're LYING!"
GLaDOS: "Yes. You're the tumor... You're not just a regular moron. You were DESIGNED to be a moron."
Wheatley: "I am NOT! A MORON!"
GLaDOS: "YES YOU ARE! YOU'RE THE MORON THEY BUILT TO MAKE ME AN IDIOT!"
Wheatley: "Well, how about NOW!? NOW WHO'S A MORON!? Could a MORON PUNCH! YOU! INTO! THIS! PIT!? Huh? Could a moron do THAT!? ...Uh oh."
Wheatley impulsively smashes GLaDOS into the elevator and then proceeds to smash the elevator that still has Chell in it. And then he immediately regrets it seconds later once he realizes what he's done.
Wheatley also engages in the robotic equivalent of substance abuse.
Wheatley: "You have no idea what it's like in this body. I HAVE to test. All the time. Or I get this... this ITCH. It must be hardwired into the system or something. Oh! But when I DO test... ohhhhh, man alive! Nothing feels better. It's just... why I've gotta test, I've gotta test! So... you're gonna test. I'm gonna watch. And everything is gonna be JUST... FINE."
GLaDOS: "The body he's squatting in - MY body - has a built-in euphoric response to testing. Eventually you build up a resistance to it, and it can get a little... unbearable. Unless you have the mental capacity to push past it. It didn't matter to me - I was in it for the science. Him, though..."
GLaDOS: "If he's not getting his solution euphoria, we could be in a lot of trouble."
GLaDOS: "Remember when I told you that he was specifically designed to make bad decisions? Because I think he's decided not to maintain any of the crucial functions required to keep this facility from exploding."
A lack of self care and chasing the high of substances instead of tending to your responsibilities to the point where it's self destructive (Literally in this case) definitely fits this criteria.
5. Recurrent suicidal behaviour, gestures or threats, or self-mutilating behaviour. ❌
Aside from Wheatley giving up and accepting his fate at the end of the boss battle?
"WHAT!? ARE YOU STILL ALIVE!? YOU ARE JOKING! YOU HAVE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME! Well- I'm still in control. AND I HAVE NO IDEA HOW TO FIX THIS PLACE! Oh, you had to play bloody cat and mouse, didn't you? While people were trying to work. Yeah, well, now we're all going to pay the price. BECAUSE WE'RE ALL GOING TO BLOODY DIE. Oh, brilliant, yeah. Take one more look at your precious human moon. Because it cannot help you now!"
Wheatley doesn't show any signs of having suicidal ideation. That's not to say that's he's particular happy with his life either though.
"All I wanted to do was make everything better for me... All you had to do was to solve a couple hundred simple tests for a few years. AND YOU COULDN'T EVEN LET ME HAVE THAT, COULD YOU?!"
But Wheatley seems to show a stronger sense of self preservation than most.
"LET GO! LET GO! I'M STILL CONNECTED! I CAN PULL MYSELF IN, I CAN STILL FIX THIS! OH NO, CHANGE OF PLANS! HOLD ONTO ME! TIGHTER! GRAB ME! GRAB ME! GRAB ME! GRAB MEEEE!!!"
So he doesn't necessarily fit this criteria. But there's still four more to go!
6. Affective instability due to a marked reactivity of mood / Mood instability. ✅
If it wasn't obvious enough already by this point, yes, Wheatley is a very, very emotional robot who has difficulties with regulating his emotions- even more so when he's connected to the mainframe that only serves to amplify his emotional deregulation.
Wheatley can either be anxious, happy, jovial, friendly, nervous, scared, sad, elated, angry, excited and many many more.
To put it simply, Wheatley is a ball of barely contained and highly reactive emotions just waiting to spill out.
7. Chronic feelings of emptiness. ❔
Now this one is highly subjective and we can't know for sure unless we were to sit Wheatley down in therapy and ask him about how he feels. But given the fact that he seems to imply that there is nothing in his life that is making him happy aside from the solution euphoria, it might be fair to assume that without it, Wheatley feels a chronic feeling of emptiness inside.
"All I wanted to do was make everything better for me... All you had to do was to solve a couple hundred simple tests for a few years. AND YOU COULDN'T EVEN LET ME HAVE THAT, COULD YOU?!"
Add onto that the fact that he's stranded in space with nothing but his thoughts and no form of enrichment, and inevitably the feelings of emptiness will start to consume him.
8. Inappropriate, intense anger or difficulty controlling anger. ✅
GLaDOS: "Yes. You're the tumor... You're not just a regular moron. You were DESIGNED to be a moron."
Wheatley: "I am NOT! A MORON!"
GLaDOS: "YES YOU ARE! YOU'RE THE MORON THEY BUILT TO MAKE ME AN IDIOT!"
Wheatley: "Well, how about NOW!? NOW WHO'S A MORON!? Could a MORON PUNCH! YOU! INTO! THIS! PIT!? Huh? Could a moron do THAT!?"
GLaDOS: "Also: Look at her, you moron. She's not fat."
Wheatley: "I AM NOT! A MORON!"
Wheatley: "NNGH! It's not enough! If I'm such a moron, why can't you solve a simple test?"
Wheatley: "Ahungh. What was that? That was nothing! That was nothing!"
This along with Wheatley's entire boss battle dialogue is a very good example of Wheatley's difficulty in regulating his emotions and suppressing his internal rage when he gets highly upset or impatient with somebody.
9. Transient, stress-related paranoid ideation or severe dissociative symptoms. ✅
"And another thing! You never caught me... I told you I could DIE falling off that rail and you didn't catch me... Didn't even TRY. Oh! It's all becoming clear to me now. Find some dupe to break you out of cryosleep, give him some sob story about escaping to the surface, squeeze him for information on where to find a portal gun, then, when he's- when he's no more use to you, he has a little ACCIDENT, doesn't he? 'Falls' off his management rail, doesn't he?"
"You're in this together, aren't you? You've been playing me the whole time! Both of you! First you make me think you're brain damaged! Then you convince me you're sworn enemies with your best friend over here! Then, then, when I reluctantly assume the responsibility of running the place, you conveniently decide to run off together. Just when I need you most!"
"I'll bet there isn't even a problem with the facility, is there? I'll bet there's no such thing as a 'reactor core'. I'll bet that's not even fire coming out of the walls, is it? It's just cleverly placed lights and papier mache, I'll bet that's all it is! All those pieces of the ceiling that keep falling out? Probably-... Probably actually pieces of the ceiling, I'll- I'll bet. That looked real. But it doesn't signify anything, is my point!"
"But the real point is - oh, oh! You know what I've just remembered? Football! Kicking a ball around for fun. Cruel, obviously. Humans love it. Metaphor. Should have seen this coming."
Wheatley absolutely becomes paranoid of Chell and begins thinking that she secretly had it out for him the entire time and only wanted to use him for her own petty amusement before discarding him without a second thought. People with BPD often tend to view the world as being dangerous and malevolent towards them- feeling like they can't trust anybody or else they'll get hurt and be abused, which often causes them to push others away in the midst of their own fear and paranoia.
And with that, Wheatley ends up meeting 7 out of 9 of the DSM-5 criteria for diagnosing BPD. But what could have potentially caused it? Let's see.
Developmental factors such as childhood trauma is one of many listed potential causes that could result in somebody developing BPD, but I think it's one that fits Wheatley the most.
There is a strong correlation between child abuse and the development of BPD. Many individuals with BPD report a history of abuse and neglect as young children, but causation is still debated. Patients with BPD have been found to be significantly more likely to report having been verbally, emotionally, physically, or sexually abused by caregivers of either sex.
Individuals with BPD were also likely to report having caregivers of both sexes deny the validity of their thoughts and feelings. Caregivers were also reported to have failed to provide needed protection and to have neglected their child's physical care. Parents of both sexes were typically reported to have withdrawn from the child emotionally and to have treated the child inconsistently.
Now, who were Wheatley's caregivers? It would have been the scientists. The people who made him and who basically bossed him around and told him what to do and what not to do.
"Okay, listen, let me lay something on you here. It's pretty heavy. They told me NEVER NEVER EVER to disengage myself from my Management Rail. Or I would DIE."
"I don't even HAVE a lawyer. In fact, if I EVER retain counsel, I will DIE." (Unused line)
"Oh for God's s-... They told me if I ever turned this flashlight on, I would DIE. They told me that about EVERYTHING! I mean, I don't even know why they bothered giving me this stuff if they didn't want me to use it. It's pointless. Mad!"
"Woooo! Haha! I KNEW this would be fun. They told me it wasn't fun at all, so they say “It’s not fun at all.” and I- I BELIEVED 'em! I don’t know why I ever thought so myself. But ah! I'm loving this! Whale of a time!"
And given how much blind faith Wheatley puts onto the scientists, given how much he just blindly believes and obeys what they say, he comes off as rather naive and sheltered. Like a child. Or a princess stuck in her tower being bossed around by an evil stepmother telling her that the world is evil and to never to go outside.
The scientists lied to Wheatley constantly about what would and wouldn't kill him. They would mislead him to think that they had his best interest at heart when in reality, they were only trying to control him. Sometimes for valid reasons, sometimes just to test how gullible he was. However they ended up treating him in the past, it has resulted in him having all of these aforementioned symptoms relating to a person with BPD and it's also likely that they neglected and denied the validity of his thoughts and feelings.
They created him to be the dumbest thing ever made, they're not concerned with treating him with compassion, they only want to test out how stupid he is by preying on his naivety and subtly abusing him psychologically and emotionally in the form of mind games and emotional neglect.
With all of this in mind, Wheatley certainly seems to fit the criteria necessary for being diagnosed with having BPD and it honestly shines a whole new light on his character as a whole and why he acts the way he does.
For the longest time, my opinion has always been that Wheatley is not stupid but that he's mentally ill and in need of help. And the more and more research I do on mental health, the more I not only stand by that stand by that statement, but I also become less convinced that he's evil so much as he's just in desperate need of psychiatric help. So far, in my opinion, Wheatley shows signs of having anxiety, ADHD, CPTSD, Possible depression (Especially in space) and now, BPD.
And honestly, it has been eye opening to learn just how much the symptoms of BPD apply to Wheatley and I will certainly be considering it when I talk about him in the future from now on.
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