Tamika Kitwana
In the story “Alice in Wonderland” by Lewis Carroll, Alice could be characterized as having the traits of a person with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). Alice plays an important part in the story. Reading the story you would find that EVERY character shows some type of Psychological problems.
Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) is a sickness that is described as a lingering disturbance of personality function in a person and it includes the changing of moods a lot. Being that Alice is only a little girl, I had to diagnose her as an adolescent. Being an adolescent and have BPD your trait somewhat differentiate. Symptoms include acting out unexpectedly without any considerations of the consequences, very strong emotions, intense but short anxiety episodes, difficulty controlling emotions, and fear of being alone, also you have insecurities as to who you are.
Reading the story, when you first meet Alice, she seems to always be a bit to jumpy and emotional. Almost instantly as you start reading Alice has already encountered issues with her emotions. When she falls down the rabbit-hole instead of her worrying if she was going to get hurt, all she did was cry and moan about not being able to see her cat Dinah, but then she got over it very quickly when she saw something that caught her eye., as seen on pages 6-7. Another way of knowing that she carries the BPD traits was when she saw a bottle that had the words “DRINK ME” printed on it. Now any “LUCID” person would know that drinking something without knowing exactly what it is, could either lead to something good or something bad. Because we have common sense, we choose to not drink it at all, but in Alice’s case, she chooses to drink it without thinking of what might happen. After drinking it she realizes very quickly that she shouldn’t have and goes into a mini episode of crying and not being able to control her tears.
Another example was when she decided to pick herself back up and look around for something to solve her problem, and in doing so she found a small cake that had a label on it reading “EAT ME”. Alice clearly states “Well, I’ll eat it” as seen on page 13 in the first chapter. By just eating the cake Alice shows that she truly didn’t think about what could happen. She figured it wouldn’t kill her just because it didn’t say the word “POISON” on it. A different example showing Alice’s disorder was when she sat down after growing very large after eating the cake and started crying again, which also didn’t last too long. She kept beating herself up saying “You ought to be ashamed of yourself,” and “stop this moment, I tell you!”, key signs that she has trouble controlling her emotions and always bringing herself down.
Throughout the story, Alice kept indulging into things that she hadn’t the slightest clue about. According to page 43-44 when Alice ran to the Rabbits home, she saw another bottle, with liquid inside; the only difference was that this particular bottle didn’t have the words “POISON” nor “DRINK ME” on it. Yet Alice being the risky person that she is, she drinks the whole entire thing anyway and then quickly falling into a depressed mood. An additional feature that Alice reveals was when she hadn’t the slightest clue as to who she was, she knew that she woke up being ‘Alice’ before in the morning, but as her adventure continued it came a point where she didn’t know who she was. She sat down and questioned herself ‘Who in the world am I”. She also went on calling out different names, and asking herself if she was that person.
There are many examples that lead me to believe that Alice is a person with BPD. It’s clear that Alice has a real psychological problem. She also shows a lot of curiosity that could put her in grave danger, but she doesn’t consider the fact that something can go wrong. She gets a thrill out of going out and looking for adventure. But again doesn’t consider what might happen to her.
