I read the novel Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn about a year ago, and I was both horrified and fascinated by the plot and the characters, especially the main character Amy Elliott Dunne and her husband, Nick Dunne. Nick and Amy appear to be happily married at first. Amy disappears on their fifth wedding anniversary, and Nick becomes the prime suspect in Amy’s disappearance. We are led to believe that he killed her due to several of Amy’s diary entries and occurrences. (Spoiler alert) However, we learn in the second half of the novel that it was just an elaborate ruse constructed by Amy to get revenge on Nick for cheating on her. She manipulates the situation to make it seem as though Nick killed her, and she does this through extortion, manipulation, murder, and lying.
While reading the novel, I always thought Amy might have some sort of personality disorder (or multiple) in order to be able to do all that, so I decided to diagnose her. Amy does several things throughout the novel to characterize her as a psychopath. First of all, she frames her husband for murder and fakes her own disappearance, to get revenge for her husband’s infidelity. In her quest for revenge, she kills another man and manipulates him, and disregards her family’s feelings. Psychopaths are characterized as being daring and taking risks, which fits in with Amy’s quest for revenge.
Amy Elliott quite possibly also suffers from the narcissistic personality disorder. We can see this mainly due to Amy’s desire for revenge after she saw Nick cheating on her. This is very characteristic of a person with this disorder, as well as their desire to be the center of attention at all times. We can see that Amy loves being the center of attention when she watches the news coverage of herself while she’s on the run.
Amy Elliott also had a strange childhood that could’ve possibly influenced her life and resulted in her narcissism. Her parents were famous authors of children’s’ books, with Amy starring the books as “Amazing Amy”. Every time Amy did something wrong, “Amazing Amy” would do it right in the books. Her parents basically profited off of her childhood, which ultimately messed Amy up. According to researchers, narcissism could stem from extreme forms of dysfunctional parenting, when the “children strive to meet their unfulfilled early needs during adulthood.”
Amy also has a history of manipulating people to do her bidding without thinking about them. It seems like she has no conscience, and we can see this when she uses Desi and manipulates him and later murder him just so it seems like he raped her and tried to kill her. This is another characteristic of the antisocial personality disorder (psychopathy), since people with that disorder have no regard for right or wrong.
My final takeaway on this topic is that Amy Elliott definitely had either the antisocial personality disorder or the narcissistic personality disorder (or both). Her actions throughout the novel make it clear that she needs serious help.
Picture sources:
http://fe867b.medialib.glogster.com/media/b1/b1b7907dc8365bd9a1ff5c5a0994a109f58088852263a3398e60e9e549244d23/antisocial-20personality-20disorder.jpg
http://www.usnews.com/dims4/USNEWS/a30c4dd/2147483647/resize/652x%3E/quality/85/?url=%2Fcmsmedia%2F77%2F71%2F267e84a94af0843a72468cae0b69%2F141027-gonegirl-submitted.jpg
This was an awesome post to read because I read the book Gone Girl after watching (and loving) the movie. The way Amy’s mind works was very intriguing and extremely hard to comprehend. Although the book was complex, it was clear that Amy had something mentally wrong with her. Along with that though, I could not understand how Amy could act the way she did, but also how she came up with all the ideas and strategies of setting up her husband so it makes sense that it could be assumed that she has a mental disability, like a personality disorder. Really creative and unique topic!
I was extremely excited to read this blog when I saw the title! Although I never read the book, I watched the movie, and I loved it! It is very horrifying and fascinating, like you said. The movie kept my attention the whole way through. At the end, when the credits started rolling, my first thought was, “This lady is messed up!” So i definitely agree with your analysis that she has something wrong with her. What sane women would fake her own death, fake a rape, and murder an old friend and feel no empathy. We recently learned about the characteristics of a psychopath in Psych 100, and she definitely has the antisocial behavior, and the lack of ability to feel sadness, or regret. She literally cannot feel these emotions. I would love to hear more about personality disorders from you! It’s so awesome! Thanks for sharing!
I think it is very interesting that you chose to look into this. Personally, I never read or watched Gone Girl but I had heard a lot of buzz about it and debate on subjects similar to this. I think it was cool that you analyzed a character like this for the blog!