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Amazing Amy or Antisocial Amy?

Amazing Amy – the terrifyingly beautiful new face of absolute evil. Amy Dunne, one of the two main characters of Gone Girl (Gillian Flinn, 2013), who is shown as an evil, manipulative woman who does a lot of questionable things, mentioned later in the essay, in the name of “revenge”. In this essay, I will attempt to clinically diagnose Amy into one or more clinical disorders.

Amy is a classic example of someone with Antisocial personality disorder (ASPD). This disorder is characterised by lack of moral and ethical development, deceitfulness, shameless manipulation of others and a history of conduct problems as a child. Amy scores high on all these parameters. (American Psychiatric Association, 1995)

She disappears on her fifth wedding anniversary and through a series of well thought out clues left behind, manipulates everyone to believe her husband murdered her. 
She, in fact, admits to manipulating her husband into being someone she would want to marry and when the manipulation started wearing off and he started becoming himself, she had bursts of inappropriate anger which is also a symptom of antisocial personality disorder.

She has no moral compass, she brutally murders her ex-lover while making love to him and announces a fake pregnancy in the end of the book so her husband cannot leave her despite knowing all her true intentions. She feels absolutely no remorse while killing someone or accusing her husband of murder, another symptom of ASPD. (American Psychiatric Association, 1995)

She has an inability to follow social norms. Amy's behavior seems contrary to that which would be in line with societal norms. We can see from her actions, that this divergence from societal norms is quite stark. Within her world and her narrative for herself, she's the hero, and she paints a picture for herself that makes her appear as the hero, given the circumstances. In her case, her portrayal of the victim to the rest of the society makes her take on an extremely dramatic victim role—indirectly, seeming as the hero in her own and society’s eyes, the latter on account of the trauma she has so courageously overcome. 

In the DSM, under the Cluster B, we find both borderline personality disorder and antisocial personality disorder—when making a diagnosis on these disorders, a patient doesn’t have to fit exactly one or the other, he/she can have aspects of both.

Amy shows symptoms of borderline personality disorder (BPD) such as chronic feelings of boredom, with her husband and their marriage which drive her to do the actions stated above. A pattern of unstable and intense interpersonal relationships, characterized by alternating between extremes of idealization and devaluation, is also seen through her relationship with her husband where she constantly shuttles between either intense love or revengeful hatred towards him. She also attempts self-mutilation in order to gain attention and manipulates the people around her. She cuts herself in several places and portrays be a rape victim when, in reality, she was the murderer. The chronic feeling of emptiness pervasive in her character can be seen throughout the novel (American Psychiatric Association, 1995).

BPD is associated with relationship dysfunction, the effect is a more general phenomenon applying rather broadly to Axis II pathology. Amy and her husband’s relationship was entirely dysfunctional which could be seen from her accusing him of murder just because he was cheating on her and she wanted to teach him a lesson. They lie to each other and detest each other for who they really are but due to circumstances have to be together. (Daley, Burge, & Hammen)

Thus, it could be seen how Amy might have antisocial and borderline personality disorders. The cause for the personality disorders in her case could be rejection by her parents as they preferred the made up book character “Amazing Amy” to their real daughter. She thus had dysphoria as she could never stand a chance against her perfect fictional self. (American Psychiatric Association, 1995).

Though more men than women show these disorders, Amy Dunne is one of those rare cases.

BIBLOGRAPHY 

American Psychiatric Association. (1995). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders: Dsm-Iv: international version with Icd-10 codes. Washington, DC.

Daley, S. E., Burge, D., & Hammen, C. (n.d.). Borderline personality disorder symptoms as predictors of 4-year romantic relationship dysfunction in young women: Addressing issues of specificity. Retrieved from https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2000-05424-011.


Flinn, G. (2013). Gone Girl. Turtleback Books.

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