#(more than 4'500 words long kind of post)

[drdumaurier]

What’s your stance on Bedelia’s mental health and how do you explain some of the morally ambiguous things she did? How did you settle on the way you want to interpret and express her mental state? I’ve seen her being interpreted as a psychopath, do you support this diagnosis, and if not, why so? Do you find it challenging writing a character with such a complex emotional inner life? P.S., I love your blog. :)

Quick note before you start reading: This is the longest headcanon I’ve ever written and I’m sorry it became so long, but it’s the result of putting a lot of headcanons and thoughts together. As my wife so perfectly put it when she read it and saw that I mentioned I could probably go on “oh God no you would crash tumblr's word limit”. Also I say it a few times in the text, but this is only from my personal interpretation of her character. Now if you’re up for the challenge, have fun reading it! 

     First, I’d like to say that everyone sees Bedelia differently and it’s not a question to debate. I know from where you come from with your question, so what I’m going to say is that my interpretation is how I see her and everyone is free to see her the way they want. Furthermore, I’m not a therapist and while I’ve been doing quite extensive research in psychiatry for my own interest, I’m not making any diagnosis because it’s not my place. Everything that will be expressed in this answer is from personal research and personal opinions, so it’s not “the truth”. Now, in my interpretation, Bedelia is not a psychopath and for numerous reasons. I’m not going to make a full list of all my arguments because it would become too long. First of all, it’s difficult to define psychopathy as it doesn’t express itself exactly the same way depending from one individual to another. Also in the International Classification of Diseases (ICD) maintained by the World Health Organisation, psychopathic personality disorder is included in the antisocial personality disorder as well as: amoral personality disorder, asocial personality disorder, dissocial personality disorder, and sociopathic personality disorder. So there is no clear definition, but from the “list of common symptoms” I found, only few apply or only partially. To take some examples with how I see them applying or not to Bedelia:

Extensive callous and manipulative self-serving behaviours with no regard for others: No. While she has a tendency to manipulate people to get out of situations, it’s self-preservation and it’s not callous. There’s a difference between manipulating people to achieve higher goals and only self-preservation. It could be debatable when she was a teenager and dated older guys who could buy her alcohol, but there were real feelings involved.

Pathological lying: She mentioned that she told “half-truths” and once again only to protect herself. She isn’t a pathological liar, but she does lie sometimes to protect herself.

Little reaction to fear: It’s more than obvious than she feels fears and shows it. It has been observed that psychopath don’t show much reaction to fear which isn’t the case with her as seen multiple times through the series.

Impairments in processes related to affect and cognition: There are two types of empathies, cognitive and affective.  The first one is the ability to recognise emotions in the other by observing them which is the one psychopaths usually have. They’re able to see that someone is afraid or happy, but nearly in a scientific way. It’s what they can use to manipulate people. In Bedelia’s case, she feels both. Her empathy isn’t only based on observing people. Yes, she does it quite a lot because of her work as some people hides a lot and analysing facial expressions, for example, helps, but she’s able to feel empathy even if she’s not very empathetic. Like in real life, some people have just less empathy than others, it doesn’t make them psychopath. Also some people feel empathy towards people they know/are close to (like Bedelia), but less when it’s strangers. Her empathy and compassion is simply selective like some people.

Objectisation of the other: No. She truly cares about some people and she will never consider them as objects she can use. There are cases in which she feels that it’s her only way to protect herself, but she doesn’t use them as objects. Also if she cares about someone, she will never do it. To take Dimmond’s example, she told him to go to the police (deleted scene, but from the script “Unless you believe you are beyond harm, go to the police.”

Unwillingness to accept responsibility for actions: She knows what she did and she takes responsibility. In Tome-Wan, once she’s certain to be safe from prosecution, she says “I killed him” talking about her patient. She knows what she did and takes responsibility.

Tendency to boredom and need for stimulation: It is true that she went to Europe with Hannibal, but her life before tended to be calm without too much simulation. She retired and other than him, not much was happening. She doesn’t seek constant simulation even if she’s still active in the psychiatric field.

Impulsivity and irresponsibility: She’s always careful with the situation she’s in. Yes, she can be reckless, but only to a certain point and she most of the time planned a way out as seen in Florence. She doesn’t simply run into danger without thinking about it. One time she made an impulsive decision was when she tried to run away in Florence, but that was a reaction caused by fear. She felt threatened and tried to flee like a lot of people do when facing danger.

     In conclusion, no I don’t see my interpretation of her as a psychopath for those reasons and more. If you want to know more about psychopaths and understand French, this video from two therapists is extremely interesting (English subtitles might come soon).

     Now to how I see her mental health and the morally ambiguous things she did. In …And the Woman Clothed in Sun, we learn about her patient’s death, but also that she has a primal rejection of weakness before she adds that it’s as natural as the nurturing instinct. It’s that instinct that took over when Neil was shocking on his tongue. In the script we have a part about her looking at him in disgust and then that it was a mercy killing. While it is debatable it was mercy, she still killed a patient, she still has that instinct that Hannibal knew about and he used it to see how she would react (given that it’s obvious with the light therapy that Neil was used in that goal). Not everyone has a strong nurturing instinct, in Bedelia’s case, it’s not her main instinct. It’s natural, if you hit an animal on the road, there will usually always be one person who’ll want to save it and another who’ll want to end its suffering. For her and with the backstory, the reason she has a rejection of weakness comes from both nature and nurture. As I wrote in other posts, Bedelia grew up with a lot of expectations from her parents because she was a good student and generally working hard to reach her goals. Very early on, she developed a fear of failure which combined with an already existing rejection of weakness made her as she is today. I’d like to say that as a child, she wasn’t already thinking about crushing wounded birds as she mentioned to Will, but she would stay away from people that she knew would bring her down. She made choices mostly based on what was best for her, it was both selfish and due to her fear of disappointing her parents, but there has always been one exception and that is people she cares about/love. Of course when she was young, she wasn’t the kind of child to not help at all if she didn’t care about the other child, but she still put her close friends first. During her time in high school and university, she has a period during which she would find ways to relax and be self-destructive because of that fear of failing and only worsened the whole thing. To come back to present days Bedelia, she still has that fear, it’s anchored in her her chore, and her rejection of weakness also comes from the fact that if she could go through things, then other should too, but she fights against that first instinct to still be able to help her patients and as per usual, the exception is people she cares about/loves. The only times she “lost” the fight against her rejection of weakness was when she killed a patient about to die anyway (her first mercy killing), when Neil swallowed his tongue, and also when Sogliato had the ice pick in his head and she removed it (he was dying, she simply made it happen faster).      Also it’s important to not that she rejects her own weaknesses and hates to be vulnerable/seen as vulnerable because she has always had to be perfect as her mind has kept repeating her since she was perhaps 6-7 years old. So she has a rejection of weakness that is pretty strong, but it doesn’t reach the point where she would simply believe everyone under her is pitiful and needs to be crushed, simply that when things reach a certain point, she will reject them. Her first patient was about to die anyway, she just decided to end their suffering faster. Her second patient swallowed his tongue and bit it so hard that it wasn’t attached anymore and he was dying most of the time (he was killed the moment he could breathe again, but who knows in which state he would have been). Furthermore, his behaviour was pretty threatening, so fear is to be included in the mix, and also it’s obvious at the end that she realises what she has done and how awful she feels. From the script: “Bedelia, breathless with horror and adrenaline, turns slowly to see Hannibal lurking behind her.” She knows what she has done and she’s horrified by it. Hannibal knows that it wasn’t only self-defence, but it doesn’t make her a cold-blooded killer.

     About her selfishness and level of empathy, Bedelia will put her own safety first. It doesn’t mean that she’ll throw someone under the bus to make her look better, what it means is that in situations in which her life is on the line, she’ll save her own skin (with the same exception as stated before). Also in the series, we’re shown a character with an extremely high level of empathy (Will), so compared to him, hers seem very low, but also she’s not shown in situation with other people much. Even in season 3. The interactions she has are mostly with Hannibal, Will, and a bit Neil. It’s hard to judge exactly how empathetic and selfish she is in normal situations given that none of what happened is “normal”. My view on her is that yes, she is selfish, but mostly for self-preservation, and yes, she may have a lower level of empathy than some of the characters in the series, but what happened to her explains it (from the backstory I have for her included the part with her ex-fiancé), also so would I and I don’t think I particularly lack of empathy. In my portrayal, nurture played a big part in why she acts this way.

     Another important part of how I see her is the fact that she doesn’t show emotions. Bedelia hates not being in control of the situation (I’ll come back to that later) which means she needs to be in control of her emotions and it’s also related to what I wrote previously when I said that she refuses to show vulnerability, so mostly “bad” emotions. It is shown multiple times through the series that during extreme situation, her emotionless façade cracks, but most of the time, she simply keeps her emotions for herself by bottling them up. In season 1, we mostly see Bedelia in session with Hannibal and her facial expressions change depending on what happens, but it’s never obvious and when a sore subject (the patient who “attacked” her, both with Hannibal and Jack) is mentioned, she pretends that everything is perfectly alright. This is something she learned to do very young, her need to be perfect also made her start hiding negative emotions, but also extreme positive emotion. As the proper daughter of the Du Maurier, Bedelia kept being polite and avoided to show excitement for example as it was not what was  expected from her. For the negative emotions (sadness or anger for example), it was because it made her vulnerable and, again, not perfect. In season 2 and 3, that’s when we see more emotions coming from her, but the negative ones are visible only under extreme situation and she struggles to maintain her composure. It’s a way to protect herself: don’t let people see your emotions and they won’t be able to use them against you. It was used against her by her ex-fiancé. It’s the same reason that prevents her from seeking help and instead cope with her issues herself (in bad ways, but at least it’s her own doing). It takes her a lot to open up about things and to feel comfortable showing more emotions. If she shows someone when she’s vulnerable, then she’s truly trusting that person. In her mind, bottling up her emotions and feelings is the way to go to protect herself and go through life. It is a bad idea, she tells her patients to not do that, but after all, doctors make the worst patients.

     In relation to that, let’s talk about her anger quickly. Bedelia doesn’t show anger easily, she stays cold and composed to a certain point, then there is the part where she will raise her voice (as seen with Will), but if she’s extremely angry, then she will become cold again but in a destructive way. If someone pushes her too far, she will be colder than the zero absolute and she will attack where it hurts as a defence mechanism. There is no enjoyment in hurting the other when she’s angry, but she will do it as she feels like a trapped animal who will attack to defend itself. If she’s yelling and suddenly becoming cold again, it’s a bad sign and it’s going to be violent mentally. It’s important to know that afterwards, if she was like that towards someone she loves/cares about, she will feel awfully bad and guilty for having hurt them.

     Now I’ll put two things together: her constant need of control and her self-destruction. It seems to not make sense to put them together, but there’s actually a strong link between the two. For her, when she’s in control of the situation, it means she’s safer. Giving up control for another to have it is something that terrifies her and if she does it, she trusts the other person pretty much with her life. Throughout her life, there has been moments during which she had little to no control over the course of events and it doesn’t bring back good memories. Even if it was something she did before, it was the attack of one of her patients that truly made her realise how vulnerable she is when she’s not in control. That attack also partially explains why she reacted violently towards Neil as he was threatening her. Being in control of the situation means being able to flee if needed, stay safe from harm, and not be taken by surprise.

     The reason I linked it with her self-destruction is because it’s something she controls. There is no doubt that Bedelia has self-destructive tendencies by both drinking heavily and being in dangerous situation, but she is alright with it as long as it’s her choice and she’s in control. If some harm is forced onto her, she will fight to save her skin, that’s her self-preservation reaction. However, when it’s chosen, like her heavy drinking and substance abuse, she won’t fight it because it’s her own choice to destroy herself in such ways. The same goes with dying, she needs to have control over the way she dies. If she’s killed by someone and it isn’t her choice, then she will prevent it. If she’s dying because of some bad mix between alcohol and meds, then she’ll let it happen because it was her decision that caused it. Her need to be in control goes as far as her needing to decide how she’s hurt and in that case, she accepts it only if it’s caused by herself/her own decision.

     Also I can add her trust issues to the mix. Bedelia doesn’t trust easily at all and breaking it means that there is no way to gain it back. Due to bad experiences with people (see the links to headcanons above), she keeps her distance with everyone, making it extremely hard for them to show her that they’re trustworthy and, even if they do succeed, there will still be a time during which she will have her doubts about it. It’s linked to her need to be in control because trusting someone and opening herself up to them means giving them power over her which is something huge for her. When she trusts someone, she trusts them with her life. So rare are the ones she trusts and rarer are the selected few who know about the truth of some events of her past. She’s protecting herself, but it also means that she’s letting her emotions devour her from inside because she doesn’t share. This headcanon talks more about her trust issues and also how she loves.

     Concerning the mental health issues she has, they’re more or less present depending on which period of her life it is and I’ll explain how and why. They’re mostly taken from that post:

Alcoholism and substance abuse: Bedelia has struggled with alcohol abuse since she was a teenager as for substance abuse, she tried things during university and later she started self-medicating.

Anxiety: While she hides it extremely well, Bedelia has an anxiety disorder that can sometimes interfere with what she’s currently doing. She self-medicates to avoid it.

Cynicism: Even if she’ll never be obvious about it, it’s something that has an influence on her decisions.

Defensiveness: Due to her fear of failing and not being good enough, she will be defensive against some comments even if once again, it’s not the most obvious.

Depersonalisation: It tends to happen during emotionally intense moment.

Depression: It depends on the period of her life as it’s not something constant, but the most obvious time it happened was after her miscarriage.

Derealisation: Same as for depersonalisation.

Dissociation: See above.

Emotional detachment: See above.

Flashbacks: Due to the traumatic events that took place in her life, she has recurrent memories that come back in the form of flashbacks.

Flat affect: It isn’t something that always happens, but it can occur when she’s struggling with emotions and becomes emotionless.

Guilt: This occurred particularly after the deaths of her patients, her attack, her miscarriage, and later with Hannibal. It’s also linked to the fact that she’s terrified of failing and feels that she wasn’t good enough.

Hyper-vigilance: Especially during and after Europe, Bedelia will react to any little sound of movement that isn’t “normal.” It prevents her from relaxing and resting properly.

Insomnia: Linked to the answer above, but she has always struggled with insomnia. She doesn’t sleep much in general, but there are periods during which it becomes all too obvious she has insomnia even if she found ways to hide it and be functional with little to no sleep at night.

Intellectualisation: A way she has to cope with situations and avoid facing her feelings.

Isolation: It is seen throughout the series, but also in headcanons I wrote that she keeps herself away from the world, especially after Neil’s death as she barely leaves her house (I think it was supposed to be in the series at the very beginning, but I cannot find articles about it, possibly because it has been five years).

Night terrors and nightmares: Both because of traumatic events, it’s also one of the reasons Bedelia doesn’t sleep as she’s terrified of having any of them and then struggle with the consequences. It’s especially true when she sleeps with someone (rare, but it happens) because she doesn’t want them to witness her having nightmares or night terrors, so it isn’t rare at first that she won’t sleep or only barely to avoid it.

Panic attacks: Linked to her anxiety disorder and her PTSD. If she has one, she’ll withdraw somewhere she can be alone to not let anyone witness it.

Passive aggression: This is how she tends to react when attacked or when she reaches her limits. She is more one to become cold and passive aggressive when angry than to yell.

Phobias: Other than her fear of failure and to not be good enough, Bedelia avoid huge crowd and loud noises. Given that she sometimes doesn’t exactly have a choice, she will find a way to navigate in crowds by either numbing herself or if she has someone close with her, to stay physically close to that person. For loud noises, if they are planned (fireworks), she will prepare herself, otherwise she will jump and often panic.

Rationalisation: This is how she explained the death of her first patient and then of Neil’s to cope with them, a way to accept what she did, but in the end those events still haunt her and she struggles with the memories.

Risky sex: While quite rare, she still sometimes uses sex as a mean of self-destruction. It happens that she makes a conscious choice of choosing partners she knows are not good for her and then has to deal with the consequences which worsen her general state.

Suicidal idealisation: It depends on the period of her life, but there were moments during which Bedelia contemplated the idea without never fully doing it. However, her constant self-destruction is leading towards it.

Suppression: She keeps everything in as mentioned earlier, but of course it doesn’t work properly and emotions will eventually come back when she lets her guard down.

Thousand yard stare: Caused by the traumas she went through and by seeing horrifying things. It’s the most obvious when she’s completely dissociating.

Triggers: Bedelia has become quite good at avoiding them over the years, but there will always be things that will trigger flashbacks or reactions and given her reluctance to seek help, it stays an issue she struggles to cope with.

Trust issues: As mentioned earlier, Bedelia has a hard time trusting people, but also when she trusts, she fully trusts the person.

     Now a big part of how I see her is that she has PTSD. I keep it for the end because I wanted to comment the list first as it contains a lot of things related to it. The first even that was enough to cause it was the attack of her patient during her residency. It was something traumatising and that left her scarred both mentally and physically (the scar is still visible on her neck many years later). Then she ended the life of a patient who was already dying, her first mercy killing. While it was a choice, it wasn’t nothing. Someone died because she decided so. Later, her miscarriage and failed engagement also added to it as it became more and more clear that her ex-fiancé acted awfully towards her. At that point in her life, Bedelia has already gone through many things and her symptoms are present, but she hides them and while she sees a therapist (as therapists have to do), she obviously doesn’t share everything. Fast forward to Neil’s death which awoke her past traumas again after she had more or less successfully silenced them and bottled them up. The symptoms are pretty tame, at least until she comes back from Europe, and then it’s even worse after the loss of her leg. Those are the two times during which she struggles the most with her PTSD, but she handles it her own way and still refuses to seek help and therapy. It doesn’t help that the official story is that she was drugged up during her time with Hannibal because even if she had to talk to a therapist to help her recover (???) her memory, she couldn’t be entirely honest. This is when her alcohol and substance abuse is the worst as well as her self-destruction.

     I realise that one thing I haven’t talked about yet is her curiosity. Bedelia is a curious person when she wants to understand something like in the case of Hannibal, but she has her limit. At first she keeps him as a patient until she realises that he’s dangerous and decides to leave (season 2). Then when she’s in Europe with him, there is also a point after which she attempts to get the authorities’ attention by always shopping at the same place, sitting at a train station and staring at the camera, and asking Dimmond to help her (script). It’s also important to note that she tries to leave at some point, but Hannibal catches her before she could leave their flat, and that she has an alibi ready for when they were going to catch Hannibal (which comes back to her self-preservation). Her curiosity has its limits and even if it’s interesting to see more, her need for safety and to be in control eventually take over.

     I could probably go on with each and every issues she has ever had, but I think I went through the most important even if I already mentioned some in other headcanons. So now how I settled on the way I want to interpret and express her mental state, it’s actually something that came with time. I’ve been writing this problematic lady for 5 years now so I developed her over those years by watching her scenes many, many times, reading the scripts, reading interviews, and also by creating a backstory for her that made sense for how I see her. It was, and still is given that she’ll always be a work in progress, a work of both analysis and research. Bedelia is a complicated and mysterious character, so I had to make choices that seemed fitting for how I see her and there were things I believed in the past that I don’t anymore as we got more material with season 3. Honestly settling on her mental state and how to express it has always been analysing her scenes, putting them in relations with each other and her past, making research, and then making a decision. I’d also like to add that her backstory is entirely my own creation and I made it in a way that is both fitting her character and also explains some of her behaviours, but as said at the very beginning of this post, it’s my interpretation of Bedelia and not “the truth”. Furthermore, while her mental state changes depending on the period of her life, it also changes depending on the verses. In some AU, she can be more violent and vengeful, but it’s only strong a reaction to what happened to her and it comes from issues she already has (like PTSD) that became more intense.

     So is it challenging to write Bedelia? Hell yes. It’s all about details and keeping her reactions logical even if they seem illogical. An example is how she plans things carefully, but sometimes still acts recklessly. It seems illogical, but given her traumas and survival instinct or her curiosity, it makes sense for her. For the details, it’s always about noticing the small reactions and finding out what they mean. Her body language is extremely important to know how she feels in certain situations (even if my interpretation of a scene is not the same as other people’s and it’s normal). What I really try to do when writing Bedelia is to give small hints about how she feels through her body language and describing how she feels even if it’s barely visible for the person facing her. As for writing her traumas or morally ambiguous actions, it isn’t the easiest thing, so it takes work. Of course I can rely on personal experiences and real life to do it, but it also forces me to look further than just “oh yeah she killed people”. Writing a morally grey character is challenging, but I absolutely adore doing it and I adore Bedelia. I wouldn’t have continued to write her for so long otherwise. It’s a constant challenge, but it’s worth it.

     In conclusion (yes the real one), this became way too long and I hope it answered your questions, anon. Thank you so much for sending this, it was really interesting to go further in own I see her mental health and I hope you had the courage to read all of it. And thank you for your kind words