Darth Vader, the famous character from the Star Wars series, has been diagnosed with borderline personality disorder (BPD). Psychiatrists and psychologists working together in France have taken the time to deconstruct Darth Vader’s personality traits by picking apart the movies that he was a character in. Their determination that he suffers from borderline personality disorder is based in part on the following things:

• He vacillated between idealizing and degrading his Jedi mentors.
• He showed anger management issues and excitability.
• He acted impulsively.
• His permanent fear of losing his wife suggests serious abandonment issues.
• He may have disassociated from himself in certain scenes.
• He had paranoid thoughts.
• He changed his name to Darth Vader symbolizing an identity problem.

The study that led to these conclusions surely took a lot of time by the professional researchers. They had to watch the movies multiple times, dissecting them and discussing them with an eye towards identifying Darth Vader’s personality traits. Why is this stupid? Well, just for starters:

• Darth Vader is a made-up character, not a person.
• There probably isn’t actually enough personal history available for the character to make an accurate diagnosis and psychiatric recommendation for him if he were a real person.
• The study is given serious enough attention to have it published in Psychiatry Research. It is about a Star Wars character.

The argument for the benefit of this study is that it can be used as a teaching tool to help new students learn about identifying bipolar personality disorder. But does that really justify the time and credibility issues involved with giving a psychiatric diagnosis to a movie character?

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