Why I'm Uncomfortable With Trying To Diagnose The Siblings
I would like to preface this by saying that I'm not saying you shouldn't find representation in these people. If you have a personality disorder, and see your own behaviors in the two of them, then by all means, claim them. The point I'm going to try to be making is NOT that it's morally wrong to see yourselves in them. After all, I find autistic rep in people like Futaba Sakura, who isn't explicitly diagnosed, or trans rep in Luka Urushibara, who isn't trans within the context of the story but is so obviously trans in behavior that she'd absolutely be trans IRL. I also find pretty good autistic rep in Maria Ushiromiya from Umineko, and trans rep in [SPOILER CHARACTER] from that very same work, even though her experience doesn't exactly line up with the average trans experience.
None of these characters are diagnosed. None of them really have to be in order to be valid examples.
The point I'm going to be making in this essay is that I don't think that personality disorders have enough explanatory power for their behavior, and while Ashley and Andrew (especially Ashley) might technically qualify for one of them, I think it's a very simplistic way of characterizing their behavior. And frankly, whether or not they do qualify doesn't matter, because I think psychology as a field is grossly insufficient for characterizing and treating their behaviors… and perhaps even your own.
What, exactly, about their actions and thought patterns is disordered? The Nina incident obviously, and the calls to Julia, I guess, but what -else-?
Let's start with Ashley because she's the one people have most commonly accepted as having a PD of some kind. Namely, Borderline Personality Disorder! I'm going to go down the list of symptoms and tell you why I either do not think she has many of them, or that they're perfectly rational reactions to the environment around her.
I probably won't cover Andrew as deeply because Ashley, as loud and annoying as she is, makes everything easy to see.
-Frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment
…So.
Where, exactly, are the -frantic- efforts?
In Decay, what she's worried about is literally her dying. Not just being abandoned. And in Burial, when she feels her grip loosening on Andrew, there's nothing frantic about her reaction to it. She's just confused and thoughtful, maybe a bit worried. But that's more because she's trying to parse what's going on, and not because she's trying to avoid abandonment. She only ever speaks about it in regards to the incest vision.
The most severe actions to prevent abandonment are her calls towards Julia- assuming Andrew ever could've heard them and it wasn't just Andrew imagining what the calls could've been- but she takes immediate responsibility for them when confronted. That immediate responsibility is admittedly her just laughing it off, but there wasn't even an attempt made to justify it.
All she has is the fear of abandomment, really. With the above in mind, her calls to Julia come off as her being more of an asshole than anything.
-Unstable and chaotic interpersonal relationships, often characterized by alternating between extremes of idealization and devaluation, also known as "splitting"
I think she idealizes Andrew a lot. But the parts where she tries to """""gaslight"""" Andrew over how responsible he is for his killings aren't… devaluation. As I spoke about in my last essay, it was Ashley trying to get him to take responsibility for the actions he took supposedly for her own sake, so she knew it was for her- to make her happy.
It qualifies more for the first symptom, with that in mind, but she never, ever deviates from viewing him as her favorite person. She doesn't split. She just wants him to take responsibility so she knows that he actually cares.
-Markedly disturbed sense of identity and distorted self-image
Her self image is absolutely distorted. She's been viewed as worthless from the start of her life, and never got along with any friends or family. But her self-image is also remarkably consistent- she has a firm idea in her mind of who she is and never starts to deviate from it until, arguably, the end of the Burial route.
-Impulsive or reckless behaviors
Yes.
-Recurrent suicidal ideation or self harm
Nope. She arguably has the strongest self-preservation instincts in the whole story, and despite her viewing herself as worthless, never once actually wants to die.
-Rapidly shifting intense emotional dysregulation
-Inappropriate, intense anger that can be difficult to control
These ones are a bit iffy. The scene wherein she yells at Andrew for not taking responsibility for killing Nina and the 302 lady arguably qualifies as this. But this is the only such example of it in the story. Otherwise, she's in remarkable control of her own emotions, and all her worries over Andrew abandoning her are met with confusion more than an immediate, powerful emotional response.
-Chronic feelings of emptiness
Yeah.
-Transient, stress-related paranoid or severe dissociative symptoms
No. She displays no dissociative symptoms whatsoever and she only ever grows slightly paranoid when she sees the shift in Andrew's personality.
So, let's go over her symptoms that she unambigously has:
-Chronic feelings of emptiness
-Impulsive or reckless behaviors
And the ones she PARTLY qualifies for:
-Frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment (key word here is frantic, else she'd fully qualify)
-Unstable and chaotic interpersonal relationships, often characterized by alternating between extremes of idealization and devaluation, also known as "splitting" (she doesn't split Andrew)
The BIG maybes:
-Inappropriate, intense anger that can be difficult to control (only two such examples of that in the story)
-Rapidly shifting intense emotional dysregulation
-Markedly disturbed sense of identity and distorted self-image (her sense of self image is distorted, but her sense of identity is not disturbed; it's remarkably consistent)
You need five of these symptoms to qualify for a diagnosis. Ashley unambiguously meets two, partly qualifies for two, and the rest are either BIG maybes or flat out nos.
In other words, for people who view BPD as The Cause, she does not qualify for having the disorder. Sorry, armchair psych bros; this is your L.
As I'm sure most people reading this who see themselves in these characters have come to realize, diagnosis is mostly full of shit. And for those who have actually studied the field of psychology beyond a few random-ass articles they looked up while trying to find out why their ex or mom was so crazy, or a single college psych course, they might find my above summation to be lacking. Questionable. Even, problematic!
Well, congrats, because now I'm going to level with you about what this essay is actually about. If you understand what personality disorders are, you'd know that they are rarely the cause of anything. They're not like diseases in that they 'cause' anything; they're just words we use to describe a set of symptoms that each have their own individual causes. And while there's a lot of buzz in some circles about the heritability of personality disorders, the fact of the matter is that there is currently very, very little evidence that they're genetic.
(https://www.apa.org/topics/personality-disorders/causes)
The patterns emerge early, sure, but there is no gene for a personality disorder*. It's not, and never was, how they were always like. Nobody is doomed to develop one. They are merely born with a series of traits that might predispose them to it. By their very nature, they possess no explanatory power for behavior whatsoever. Ashley is not "like this because she has BPD," she's "she has BPD because she's like this." And this is at the core of why I'm uncomfortable with attaching a personality disorder to her.
*A malfunctioning gene has been linked to OCD, however, but even in that case it's not a gene that defines someone as OCD, because it's linked to other conditions as well such as autism, social phobias, and substance use disorders. It's merely one of the many preconditions someone may have that could lead them to developing it.
https://www.nature.com/articles/4001365
There's an old meme about trans people having BPD. I don't know if that's still a popular meme, but it was, in fact, a strong association that us in the trans community had. A way we stereotyped ourselves, as it may. And it's a pretty funny meme! Bonding over mutual trauma is always a fun time. But. I don't like that meme, either, for the same reason I don't like it for Ashley or Andrew.
I don't think medicalizing personality is a good thing.
For trans people, the fact of the matter is, we have every reason to develop BPD. The world really is that hostile towards us. Coming out can make friends drop us on a whim, transitioning makes it hard to develop lasting relationships because there's always that fear of people sexualizing us and never wanting a real, close, romantic relationship to begin with.
It's not disordered.
It's not a condition.
It's not a "problem".
It's a perfectly rational reaction to the world around us.
We have every reason to be so afraid. It'd make less sense if we weren't. And we have every reason to view every sign someone might leave as a sign that people never cared to begin with, because we have seen so many people who never HAVE really cared about us show their whole ass once we're a little bit different than they expected us to be.
The same applies to cis women, too; it's why they're diagnosed with BPD three times as much as cis men are!
And I honestly think Ashley's reactions are much the same. She was denied the benefits of the social contract her whole life, abandoned by her parents and "friends," and only ever had Andrew, who gives every indication that he's trying to distance himself from her for the sake of being normal. He refuses to give her the validation she needs to think otherwise, always making it seem conditional or coming with a caveat, and tries to pass off the responsibility for all the actions that'd prove how much he cares for her.
And, ah, Andrew, goodness gracious. I've seen so many different takes on what's up with him that it boggles the mind. It's hard to pick out just one, but ASPD is a pretty common one. But I honestly think that's even more questionable than Ashley having BPD. Like, yeah, he's mostly afraid of consequences rather than the morality of his actions, but that's because his Prime Directive is to keep Ashley safe. Any consequences necessarily separate them. And the fact that he's so willing to kill, so cold and emotionless while doing it, so emotionless after? Once more, it's his job to keep Ashley safe; to keep her happy. But society won't let him take credit. It pushes back against him taking responsibility and acknowledging just how much he wants to- and has- done for her.
He always has to distance himself from how he truly feels, lest society punish him. He's had to distance himself from his true feelings so much that it's little wonder he has any attachment to them at all anymore. Violence is the only power he's ever had, because it's the only thing society never pushed back on, and it's the only thing many of the viewers never push back on. It's how he distances himself from the things that hurt him, which is either Ashley, or the people who keep him away from Ashley.
…
But only one of those things ever truly made him happy, and it just happens to be the one that society doesn't accept.
Andrew isn't like this because he has ASPD.
Andrew has ASPD because he's like this.
It's the effect, not the cause.
The cause is the world around him; the world around Ashley.
Medicalizing something implies the issue is internal. It implies it's something we can fix from within ourselves. And, at worst, it implies that it's our fault. We should take responsibility for maladaptive behaviors, sure. We absolutely should, if only for our own sakes, lest we push people away through no fault of their own. We should do what we can to not hurt people, every step of the way. That is on us.
But there's only so much we can do when the world around us constantly reaffirms our greatest fears.
And that's exactly what the world does to the marginalized.
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