Narcissistic Personality Disorder and Manipulation

In the film, White Oleander, a young girl named Astrid struggles with the issues of searching for identity and living with a mother with serious psychological concerns. There are many psychological principles that become relevant in this film. Ingrid, Astrid’s mother, has all the obvious traits of Narcissistic Personality disorder. Ingrid has an inflated sense of her own importance and a deep need for admiration. She believes she is superior to others in her beauty, intelligence, and beliefs. Any individual who suffers from a personality disorder is often troublesome to others, and their pleasure sources are either harmful or illegal. In Ingrid’s case, her pleasure source can be both harmful and illegal. When Claire comes to meet Ingrid for the first time in prison, it is understood that Ingrid purposefully plants unhealthy thoughts into Claire’s head. Ingrid takes pleasure in manipulating people that she finds to be “weak.” While Ingrid may seem overly confident on the surface, she shows to be vulnerable to slight criticism. She needs to feel that she is always in control, and specifically, in control of Astrid. While in prison, Ingrid begins to realize that she is losing control over her daughter’s life, and reacts by criticizing her daughter’s new beliefs. When Ingrid loses control of her relationship and is rejected by her most recent lover, she responds in a completely irrational way by murdering him. In this sense, we are able to see that Ingrid also feeds her pleasure source with extreme revenge. All of these traits are key aspects of Narcissistic personality disorder and are constantly evident throughout the film. While Ingrid’s personality is extremely evident in almost every scene which she appears, I believe that this particular scene displays the extent of her narcissistic disorder. (play from 20 seconds to 3:25) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPt9lSaTHZo

Ingrid clearly treats Claire as if she is unintelligent during this conversation. The look that Ingrid gives Claire is one of amusement and almost pity. She subtly asks Claire what would seem to be trivial questions as when she asks about her husband. Ingrid then uses the answers that Claire gives her to play to her weaknesses. When she says that Astrid must be a great comfort to Claire because she was not able to have children herself, Claire’s facial expression immediately falls and Ingrid’s becomes that much more entertained. Ingrid’s body language is also very controlling of Astrid. She has her arms around her daughter in a very deliberate way that is not necessarily affectionate. I find this scene shows how manipulative Ingrid’s disorder causes her to be and how much enjoyment she gets out of emotionally injuring the people she feels threatened by.

Ingrid’s narcissistic personality has a great effect on her parenting style, causing her daughter to suffer psychologically as well. As we have learned in class and in our readings, there are numerous different parenting styles that generate different effects. Ingrid seems to have an odd combination of parenting styles that probably stems from her narcissistic personality. While at times she is completely intent on forcing her beliefs on her daughter, she is also often very neglectful of Astrid, sometimes not seeming to notice her at all. It would seem that Ingrid uses a primarily neglectful parenting style, which is classified as a style in which parents are uninvolved in their child’s life. It has been proven that children have a strong need for their parents to care about them, and children whose parents are neglectful often develop a sense that other aspects of the parents’ lives are more important than they are. As we see throughout the movie, Astrid suffers great psychological damage due to the neglect of her mother. Astrid idolizes her mother and is constantly trying to adhere to her beliefs. This idea that Ingrid displays neglectful parenting is clearly shown in this scene (From 1:00 to 2:40): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPt9lSaTHZo

Ingrid leaves Astrid in the car for a long period of time, and upon her return proceeds to only talk about herself. It appears that Ingrid is not even aware that she left her young daughter alone in the car for too long. In this scene, we also see Astrid’s infatuation of and admiration for her mother. When she seems to get bored waiting in the car, she practices lines that her mother has taught her in the mirror. Astrid appears to be trying to imitate her mother’s superior tone and facial expressions.

After studying many different psychological disorders, I thought of the film, Girl, Interrupted. I decided to re-watch the movie and attempt to diagnose each patient. The character in this film that I found to be most interesting was Lisa, played by Angelina Jolie. Though I believe Lisa was actually diagnosed as being a sociopath, I saw many signs of Narcissistic Personality Disorder as well. Throughout the movie, she continues to manipulate people, seemingly for her own amusement. She doesn’t care about the feelings of others and on the surface, appears to be confident and self-absorbed. When Lisa is feeling insecure or feels that she doesn’t have the upper hand in a situation, she reacts by manipulating others and causing psychological harm. Though I believe that Lisa suffers from other issues as well, in this scene she is extremely manipulative and evil. She reminds me of Ingrid in the sense that she feels she needs to control things and finds joy in causing others mental distress. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=98akrEa6eVw

Kaitlin Gosnay