#not take fictional characters as the bastion of what these disorders are

[bricky-brikson]

hey! this is chance & here’s week 2's prompt. when you write or create an oc, do you like to reference elements from your life? if yes, name a few. if no, why not?

Pull from my life ? Sort of. Specifically, myself. I often make my villains by extrapolating my worst behaviours. Felix Abner, the villain of my main WIP, started as a self insert.

I have BPD, quiet type, but I always think about what a worse version of myself would be like, a version of myself who didn't have the crippling anxiety that holds me back from making a scene or hurting people. Felix started as that different version of me, although he has certainly changed over time and has many aspects of his character that no longer resemble me. However, his behaviours centred around obsession and love still pull from my own disordered thinking.

Cassedy Lowell, the main character of that same story, has NPD. Although I don't have NPD, I do use some of my own self-aggrandizement as inspiration for writing him and his thought processes. I often dream of being famous or widely recognized, so I gave him similar desires then built from there (with advice from acquaintances with NPD).

I find it therapeutic to put my mental issues into my characters, especially the issues that cause me to imagine violence or have upsetting intrusive thoughts. Writing characters who go through with those thoughts lets me handle those ideas in a safe place where no one actually gets hurt.

Also, my life isn't really that interesting, so I don't have any cool events to pull from. If I had a more exciting life I'd probably use it as inspo, but I'm a pretty boring person from the outside. All the interesting things happen in my noggin.

[williamofwestworld]

Psychology of William- Today I’ve been thinking on William’s psychology and doing some research. I’m always always always a little hesitant to slap the word  “sociopath” on bad guys and call it a day, because it feels a little too easy. It’s like a blanket term that a lot of folks uses when they can’t think of anything else to call them. It also tends to water down the character’s complexity a bit, because a lot of people doesn’t know what it really means and they use it as a word to describe, in their mind, “a bad man, who has ALWAYS been a bad man since birth and they kill people.” That’s not really it...

So let’s take a look at some of the other traits that we do know about William, for a fact, that are found on his profile in the park before labeling him a sociopath:

Persecutory subtype

Delusions

Paranoid subtype

I want to start with the Paranoid subtype (because the others sort of follow along with this). There is a Personality Disorder in psychology called “Paranoid Personality Disorder”, which is closely linked to Schizophrenia, but not quite there. Paranoid Personality Disorder is quite rare and is usually linked to people who have one or two close relatives with Schizophrenia, which suggest that it is more closely related to nature, rather than nurture (although both contributes to it).

What are the symptoms of Paranoid Personality disorder? According to WebMD they are the following:

Doubt the commitment, loyalty, or trustworthiness of others, believing others are using or deceiving them

Are reluctant to confide in others or reveal personal information due to a fear that the information will be used against them

Are unforgiving and hold grudges

Are hypersensitive and take criticism poorly

Read hidden meanings in the innocent remarks or casual looks of others

Perceive attacks on their character that are not apparent to others; they generally react with anger and are quick to retaliate

Have recurrent suspicions, without reason, that their spouses or lovers are being unfaithful

Are generally cold and distant in their relationships with others, and might become controlling and jealous

Cannot see their role in problems or conflicts and believe they are always right

Have difficulty relaxing

Are hostile, stubborn, and argumentative

Most of these fits William to a tee... with the exception of fearing that their spouse (Juliet) is being unfaithful... Unless of course you count William suddenly feeling that Dolores’ love was unreal and she had always been unreal and him driving himself crazy over what is real and what isn’t.

He cannot see his role in problems, he is stubborn, hostile and argumentative, and hold grudges. He doesn’t trust anyone other than himself and often tackles problems head on because he doesn’t feel like he can ask others for help (in fact he often forces others to help, like Lawrence, instead of asking) And he doesn’t take criticism very well. He usually snaps back with something narcissistic sounding like, “I’m a bastion of society” or when he calls Ashley a “can opener”. Another example is when he lashes out against a kid and busts out his teeth when a bully made fun of him and his dad by calling his dad a drunk (this goes along with the takes criticism poorly and reacts with anger & hostility part of it). And he really is distant in his relationships, like he was with Juliet, which costed her. Point being, he fits all of the above.

We also got a good look at his delusions this season, too... who knows what else may have been going on in his head prior to this? 

Since Paranoid Personality disorder is linked to Schizophrenia, I also want to briefly touch on Schizophrenia as well. Schizophrenia is defined as:

“a long-term mental disorder of a type involving a breakdown in the relation between thought, emotion, and behavior, leading to faulty perception, inappropriate actions and feelings, withdrawal from reality and personal relationships into fantasy and delusion, and a sense of mental fragmentation.”

And one of the main symptoms is:

Positive psychotic symptoms: Hallucinations, such as hearing voices, paranoid delusions and exaggerated or distorted perceptions, beliefs and behaviors. (x)

What this all leads to, with William, is that he has always had troubled deciding fiction from reality. Or if the hosts are real or not... and why he desperately tries to grasp onto any reality that makes sense to him at the time. He thought Emily was a Host, ergo he didn’t think she was the real Emily, so he shot his Emily... which led him back to the “Hosts can’t be real” way of thinking, because he had found himself lost in a game yet again, thinking Host could be real. His reality now became... he shot his Emily because he couldn’t tell reality from fiction, so he grasped tightly onto what he thought was real yet again.

And it’s apparent he has been having “delusions” since before season one, going back and forth about the Hosts and even “thanks” Dolores for helping him see through it:

“Clearing me of my delusions yet again. Thank you, Dolores.” (S1xE10)

It’s all really a back and forth with him. It’s like he’s been trying to figure out what reality is as he goes. Like a game or a puzzle... or even with the books that he loved to read ever since he was a kid.

The last thing on the list is “Persecutory subtype” which can be classified as another disorder which produces delusions:

Persecutory delusions are a set of delusional conditions in which the affected persons believe they are being persecuted, despite a lack of evidence. Specifically, they have been defined as containing two central elements: The individual thinks that harm is occurring, or is going to occur.

All of which Ford knew about and took advantage of which pushed William over the edge and caused him to break into the mess you see in season three.