what was deanie's mental illness?

In the movie, Deenie is diagnozed as schizophrenc, but personally, I think all Deenie wa suffering from was plain old depression...she went into a deep depression after Bud dumped her, that's all.

"Nervous breakdown" was a catch-all term that hasn't been used in decades. It covered a multitude of real and imagined mental illnesses, which are now individually diagnosed and properly treated.

It happens. I can see it. Maybe she was mentally fragile to begin with and this just pushed her over the edge. Some people are like that. There's nothing wrong with that.

[deleted]

Laurel1962

You couldn't be more right in your opinion. She went crazy from repression of her physical and emotional desires of Bud.

The general term for it in the 20's was called "Hysteria" although the movie was made in the 60's it takes place in the 20's before and after the depression.

"Hysteria" originates with the Greek medical term, hysterikos. This referred to a medical condition, thought to be particular to women, caused by disturbances of the uterus which was hystera in Greek. The term hysteria was coined by Hippocrates, who thought that the cause of hysteria was due to the uterus wandering around the body in search of children and or lust. It's very sad that this was cultural treatment of women but it wasn't common for women to be institutionalized for it even though it had no real symptoms either real or imagined.

What kills me is how when she is the weakest that is when all the preditors (Toot's) come out of the woodwork to prey upon her weakened condition and Bud decides at the last minute that she is what he wants and goes to get her at home. Beautiful movie but very sad in its cultural generalities which is what I think the playright and the director were going for.

You are right about the cultural anthropology end of things (that is one of my degree fields) it scares the crap out of you how society used to treat women in general. I think that is one reason that women's studies have become such a movement since the 60's against the cutural stereotypes.

Here are the things that I find odd. Deenie's fathers overt facination with milk "remember always drink lots of milk". The torturous looks that the sluty girl gives Deenie in class and then after Deenie runs out of the room she sits and cries in self pity.

Poor poor Deenie.

Actually I am cultural anthropology major and one can get severly ill from a broken heart. Obviously given the film she probably had a nervious breakdown, and it seems silly to us now, but back then the societal pressure to stay a virgin was much higher, and given that she might have had a "nervous breakdown" over something nowadays wouldn't even give one pause.

Also here is some of the most recent data on "broken heart syndrome" from John Hopkins http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/Press_releases/2005/02_10_05.html

It was written in the 50s, but it is presenting ideas from the 1920s. Could it not be a social commentary on the idiocy of times past, as is also the strict, puritanical pressure put on the kids of the time?

Think about it this way: The Crucible was written as an allegory for the McCarthy hearings. We looked at the actions of the characters and saw the lunacy of the behavior, but were looking at the same events playing out in Washington. The film is to be seen as historical criticism.

"There is only marriage! Or insanity, apparently!" That sounds like a line right out of the film! lol.

She wanted him for sex and marriage too. He rejected her.

Back in those days being rejected when all your friends see him taking up with the fast girls was embarrassing. But it doesn't ususally end in a mental hospital.

Most girls would move on. The fact that she couldn't meant she had problems BEFORE she ever met Bud.
She had a mother who was so controlling she was smothering. And made sex a bad thing, a dangerous thing.

She thought she had to kill herself so all her friends wouldn't know Bud refused her.

Most people don;t end up in a mental hospital. The fact that she did and was there almost 3 years meant Bud was just the tipping point for other things already going on.
My gosh, 2 1/2 years? Unbelievable.

The movie was made in the 60s but took place in the 20s and 30s

I think Deanie suffered from depression with psychosis and borderline personality disorder. She was clearly depressed and when depression gets very severe she could have had a breakdown where she had became psychotic, her psychosis was her in a disscociative state when she was in the hospital after her suicide attempt brought on by the stress of her breakup with Bud. Also she may have had borderline personality disorder because if her intense attachment with Bud, suicide attempt, and other things listed int he DSM IV for Psychiatry:


DSM-IV criteria
The DSM-IV gives these nine criteria; a diagnosis requires that the subject present with at least five of these. In I Hate You -- Don't Leave Me! Jerold Kriesman and Hal Straus refer to BPD as "emotional hemophilia; [a borderline] lacks the clotting mechanism needed to moderate his spurts of feeling. Stimulate a passion, and the borderline emotionally bleeds to death."

Traits involving emotions:
Quite frequently people with BPD have a very hard time controlling their emotions. They may feel ruled by them. One researcher (Marsha Linehan) said, "People with BPD are like people with third degree burns over 90% of their bodies. Lacking emotional skin, they feel agony at the slightest touch or movement."
1. Shifts in mood lasting only a few hours.

2. Anger that is inappropriate, intense or uncontrollable.


Traits involving behavior:
3. Self-destructive acts, such as self-mutilation or suicidal threats and gestures that happen more than once
4. Two potentially self-damaging impulsive behaviors. These could include alcohol and other drug abuse, compulsive spending, gambling, eating disorders, shoplifting, reckless driving, compulsive sexual behavior.


Traits involving identity
5. Marked, persistent identity disturbance shown by uncertainty in at least two areas. These areas can include self-image, sexual orientation, career choice or other long-term goals, friendships, values. People with BPD may not feel like they know who they are, or what they think, or what their opinions are, or what religion they should be. Instead, they may try to be what they think other people want them to be. Someone with BPD said, "I have a hard time figuring out my personality. I tend to be whomever I'm with."
6. Chronic feelings of emptiness or boredom. Someone with BPD said, "I remember describing the feeling of having a deep hole in my stomach. An emptiness that I didn't know how to fill. My therapist told me that was from almost a "lack of a life". The more things you get into your life, the more relationships you get involved in, all of that fills that hole. As a borderline, I had no life. There were times when I couldn't stay in the same room with other people. It almost felt like what I think a panic attack would feel like."


Traits involving relationships
7. Unstable, chaotic intense relationships characterized by splitting (see below).
8. Frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment


Splitting: the self and others are viewed as "all good" or "all bad." Someone with BPD said, "One day I would think my doctor was the best and I loved her, but if she challenged me in any way I hated her. There was no middle ground as in like. In my world, people were either the best or the worst. I couldn't understand the concept of middle ground."
Alternating clinging and distancing behaviors (I Hate You, Don't Leave Me). Sometimes you want to be close to someone. But when you get close it feels TOO close and you feel like you have to get some space. This happens often.
Great difficulty trusting people and themselves. Early trust may have been shattered by people who were close to you.
Sensitivity to criticism or rejection.
Feeling of "needing" someone else to survive
Heavy need for affection and reassurance
Some people with BPD may have an unusually high degree of interpersonal sensitivity, insight and empathy
9. Transient, stress-related paranoid ideation or severe dissociative symptoms

This means feeling "out of it," or not being able to remember what you said or did. This mostly happens in times of severe stress.


Miscellaneous attributes of people with BPD:
People with BPD are often bright, witty, funny, life of the party.
They may have problems with object constancy. When a person leaves (even temporarily), they may have a problem recreating or remembering feelings of love that were present between themselves and the other. Often, BPD patients want to keep something belonging to the loved one around during separations.
They frequently have difficulty tolerating aloneness, even for short periods of time.
Their lives may be a chaotic landscape of job losses, interrupted educational pursuits, broken engagements, hospitalizations.
Many have a background of childhood physical, sexual, or emotional abuse or physical/emotional neglect.




Jezebel

I think I kind of agree with estella2.
I think Deanie's "mental illness" was simple hearbreak though. I mean, if you went through the same thing as her you would feel horrible too.
I had a horrible breakup in '05 and it's something that still torments me. So, do I have a mental illness too, or am I just a person who happens to have feelings? Some of us don't "get over" things as simple as others do.

You've nailed it the best so far, very good analysis.

Estella, I like your thorough yet relatively succinct distillation of the causes of Deenie's breakdown. Nicely done.

it did take place in the '20s. around the time of the stock market crash of 1929

~eVe~
Only the gentle are ever really strong. ~James Dean~

The story takes place in the late 1920's. Though it was made in 1961, the world of sex for women in the 60's was not much different than it was earlier in the century. Birth control pills weren't even available until the very late 60's, for example.

Remember: in the 1960's, abortion was illegal and a totally underground practice. There were still homes for unwed mothers, all over the country. If an unmarried girl got pregnant, even in the late 60's, she was considered a tramp and a pariah. Obviously pregnant women who weren't married DID NOT GO OUT IN PUBLIC. Most women didn't keep illegitimate children in the 60's; they mostly HAD to give them up for adoption. Society didn't approve of or tolerate unwed mothers with children.

Women were viewed in one of two ways: as either madonnas or whores. Many men today, whether they admit it or not, view women in exactly that way.

Deanie had a nervous breakdown, for a combination of reasons. It wasn't because she was horny, for God's sake (that's ridiculously reductive--women who were sexually frustrated in times when they weren't allowed to exercise their sexuality became neurotic because of their own conflicted emotions about themselves and society's pressures on them to conform--they felt tremendous guilt about their feelings, because if they ACTED upon them, they were condemned as trash, as sinners, as whores. But if they didn't act upon them, their men strayed to women who would).

In Deanie's heart of hearts, she knew she loved Bud, and that it was only because of society's mores that she didn't sleep with him, something she felt in her heart would have been fine and good and decent and true in her view--because THEY TRULY LOVED ONE ANOTHER. She was hopeful, idealistic, and her innocence hadn't yet been spoiled by cynicism and heartbreak, as it is when Bud goes off with someone else and she breaks down emotionally. She's a tremendously sensitive young teenage girl.

It's high school, too, remember--what could be more horrible--gossip runs rampant, girls are talked about behind their backs constantly, everyone knows what is going on, and Deanie herself becomes a sort of laughingstock, since Bud has rejected her for a "bad" girl.

No one loves with the intensity of the young; and no one feels the depth of despair and hopelessness that the young can feel when their hearts are broken. When Bud goes off with a "bad" girl, for Deanie, this is a betrayal of immense proportions--and of course she feels tremendously conflicted, because if she would have followed her heart and slept with him, he wouldn't have had to go off with Juanita, either. What a confusing mess for her!

It all seems pretty clear to me....

I wondered about that too. Maybe the screenwriters didn't check that out or the consulting doctors were of a differing mind, but these days, that would be the last place to look for a husband.

But; I always think 'after' a story.

Deenie had her whole life ahead of her; for all we know she amicably divorced because her husband turned out to prefer other men and he was a rebound for Bud anyway, and she found love with a man who went off to WWII and came back an amputee with one arm who became a lawyer, or an auto mechanic...

We have so many chances for happiness. Some of us (me) spend our first half century feeling somehow we don't deserve it. We changed our parents life by being born.

Life is so simple and so complicated. I suppose that's why people start taking it day by day.

Most girls back then did have premarital sex, they put up the illusion that they didn't.

"Ya know that we are living in a material world, and I am a material girl"-Madonna