Eric: Borderline Personality Disorder?

The 9 symptoms of borderline personality disorder

1. Fear of abandonment. People with BPD are often terrified of being abandoned or left alone. Even something as innocuous as a loved one getting home late from work or going away for the weekend can trigger intense fear. This leads to frantic efforts to keep the other person close. You may beg, cling, start fights, jealously track your loved one’s movements, or even physically block the other person from leaving. Unfortunately, this behavior tends to have the opposite effect—driving others away. Not sure about this one?

2. Unstable relationships. People with BPD tend to have relationships that are intense and short-lived. You may fall in love quickly, believing each new person is the one who will make you feel whole, only to be quickly disappointed. Your relationships either seem perfect or horrible, with nothing in between. Your lovers, friends, or family members may feel like they have emotional whiplash from your rapid swings between idealization and devaluation, anger, and hate.  I think this is true in his case. He had several girl friends, falling out with friends... ect. People have claimed he was an asshole.

3. Unclear or unstable self-image. When you have BPD, your sense of self is typically unstable. Sometimes you may feel good about yourself, but other times you hate yourself, or even view yourself as evil. You probably don’t have a clear idea of who you are or what you want in life. As a result, you may frequently change jobs, friends, lovers, religion, values, goals, and even sexual identity.This is evident in readng his journal, his interaction with others, and how he would contradict himself.

4. Impulsive, self-destructive behaviors. If you have BPD, you may engage in harmful, sensation-seeking behaviors, especially when you’re upset. You may impulsively spend money you can’t afford, binge eat, drive recklessly, shoplift, engage in risky sex, or overdo it with drugs or alcohol. These risky behaviors may help you feel better in the moment, but they hurt you and those around you over the long-term. Hm,overdoing it with alcohol seems more of Dylan's thing than Eric's. Not sure where this would fit in.

5. Self-harm. Suicidal behavior and deliberate self-harm is common in people with BPD. Suicidal behavior includes thinking about suicide, making suicidal gestures or threats, or actually carrying out a suicide attempt. Self-harm includes all other attempts to hurt yourself without suicidal intent. Common forms of self-harm include cutting and burning. His autopsy stated he had abrasions on his left arm. This is consistent with someone who self harms.

6. Extreme emotional swings. Unstable emotions and moods are common with BPD. One moment, you may feel happy, and the next, despondent. Little things that other people brush off can send you into an emotional tailspin. These mood swings are intense, but they tend to pass fairly quickly (unlike the emotional swings of depression or bipolar disorder), usually lasting just a few minutes or hours.Evident in the videos.

7. Chronic feelings of emptiness. People with BPD often talk about feeling empty, as if there’s a hole or a void inside them. At the extreme, you may feel as if you’re “nothing” or “nobody.” This feeling is uncomfortable, so you may try to fill the hole with things like drugs, food, or sex. But nothing feels truly satisfying.Not even death?

8. Explosive anger. If you have BPD, you may struggle with intense anger and a short temper. You may also have trouble controlling yourself once the fuse is lit—yelling, throwing things, or becoming completely consumed by rage. It’s important to note that this anger isn’t always directed outwards. You may spend a lot of time being angry at yourself. Not even going to comment other than this one fits him to a tee.

9. Feeling suspicious or out of touch with reality. People with BPD often struggle with paranoia or suspicious thoughts about others’ motives. When under stress, you may even lose touch with reality—an experience known as dissociation. You may feel foggy, spaced out, or as if you’re outside your own body.Yep, this one too.

Thoughts?

Imo, his traits are more consistent with Antisocial Personality Disorder even though he did seem to show empathy for his parents and certain friends.
In Peter Langman's Why Kids Kill, he identifies Eric as a psychopath with paranoid, antisocial, narcissistic, and sadistic features. I've actually been meaning to buy the book so I could read Eric and Dylan's passages in their entirety.

Eric was not a psychopath!

Rebdomine wrote:

Eric was not a psychopath!

Can you explain why you think that?

Psychopathy is a personality disorder characterized by manipulative behavior, a lack of empathy, fear and remorse.

As someone who works with young people and some training in psychology and psychopathology, I think you could make a good point for BPD here. As I have stated before, I would love to get a chance to see Eric's psychiatrist's notes, but alas, that will never happen. I often wonder if he (the psychiatrist) made any real diagnosis of Eric, that's all I really would like to know. I read a bit of Langman's book, but wasn't overly impressed with it.

BPD is treated with cognitive therapy and usually accompanies another illness. Any guesses as to what it might have been? Some people think OCD but I lean more towards depression.

I see a lot of similarities between Eric and I when it comes to mental illness because we are a lot alike. The reason I believe he had BPD is because I was diagnosed myself along with depression.

blackholesun wrote:

Imo, his traits are more consistent with Antisocial Personality Disorder even though he did seem to show empathy for his parents and certain friends.
In Peter Langman's Why Kids Kill, he identifies Eric as a psychopath with paranoid, antisocial, narcissistic, and sadistic features.  I've actually been meaning to buy the book so I could read Eric and Dylan's passages in their entirety.

You should. It's good. Langman is very good on this subject--read every word of the 11K.

People act like Cullen is the one who came up with this diagnosis but actually it was supported by a bunch of doctors, criminal profilers, etc. Cullen was just reporting what they said.

Eric was a psychopath who suffered from intense homicidal ideation. Meaning he was consumed by racing thoughts of homicide. It was actually not possible for Eric to focus on anything else for the final year or two of his life.

You can look at his writings and see that he wrote about nothing else; you can look at his actions and see that he worked toward nothing else; you can look at his social patterns and see that he sought nothing else except to be the murderer of everyone around him.

This is a rare type of psychological disturbance. So rare that many people don't believe it and blame video games, music, or jocks. This does not mean Eric was destined to do this. But nor was his environment the cause of anything he did.

lasttrain wrote:

Eric was a psychopath who suffered from intense homicidal ideation.  Meaning he was consumed by racing thoughts of homicide.  It was actually not possible for Eric to focus on anything else for the final year or two of his life.  

You can look at his writings and see that he wrote about nothing else; you can look at his actions and see that he worked toward nothing else; you can look at his social patterns and see that he sought nothing else except to be the murderer of everyone around him.

This is a rare type of psychological disturbance.  So rare that many people don't believe it and blame video games, music, or jocks. This does not mean Eric was destined to do this.  But nor was his environment the cause of anything he did.

Not true. Psychopaths don't have remorse and in some of the basement tapes, Eric is showing to have more remorse for what he is about to do than Dylan. Eric did think about other things besides murder. He still had to live his life concealing his plans. That must take a lot of work.

People who generally have Borderline Personality Disorder (who direct their anger outward) have short temper tantrums/fits and trouble controlling their anger in general. Eric to me doesn't seem like someone who fits that profile; he did not have a hard time at all formulating his plans. Someone with this disorder who is/are most likely to commit the crime of murder do so in a spur of the moment type fantasy in which they unleash their anger in a most unconventional way and feel remorse/sadness afterward. Borderline Personality Disorder and Intermittent Explosive Disorder are very closely linked.

.... however, we don't know exactly what he was like in all aspects of his day to day life. I will look up IED now. Thanks.

Rebdomine wrote:

.... however, we don't know exactly what he was like in all aspects of his day to day life. I will look up IED now. Thanks.

If there was anything that stood out, I am sure we'd have heard about it by now.

I don't know if Eric was a psychopath myself; but I wouldn't put him in the BPD category.

As someone professionally diagnosed with bpd I feel like the bpd is very plausible for Eric. His rants are very similar to what mine were until I started getting better through medical marijuana therapy and psychotherapy

Bpd and psychopathy are actually closely linked, so it's definitely possible.

If he had BPD, his parents would of easily noticed and he would be in therapy.... not exactly something he could easily hide. People that have it are tend to be HIGHLY volatile 24/7 if untreated

I'd like to know how they both acted when they killed their first victims. Like did they pause
and look at eachother and think wow I just ended a life, or maybe the adrenaline was pumping to hard for them to even think coherently.

I disagree that the parents would know that Eric had a problem if he had bpd. I think we can all agree erics parents were pretty hands off which my parents were like too. They wrote off the fact that I may had a psychological disorder. Instead they saw me as a misbehaving problem child with a very short fuse...a teenager suffering from a hefty dose of angst. They sent me to therapy just like eric's parents did in hopes that it would help me control my anger.

Wow, reading that, pretty sure I have BPD. :/