Every 'Star Wars' Character Has A Mental Illness, According to Scientists
If the population of the Star Wars universe as a whole seems to struggle with making rational decisions, there might be a good reason for that. In 2015, a psychologist/psychiatrist duo from opposite sides of the world teamed up for what they surely expected would be one of those lighthearted "we had extra grant money" studies and ended up writing not just one but a series of papers analyzing the characters of Star Wars. In fact, the residents of a galaxy far, far away represent such a big and broad array of psychiatric disorders that the scientists recommend using the films as teaching tools in college classrooms (some of which have heeded the suggestion).
The most troubled, of course, are those Skywalker boys. According to multiple professionals over the years, Anakin Skywalker displays clear signs of PTSD and/or borderline personality disorder, which can be hard to distinguish from each other, including splitting (that is, black-and-white thinking), projecting, and "infantile illusions of omnipotence." Nothing says "frantic efforts to avoid abandonment" like joining the dark side based on an irrational fear of spousal death. Luke, meanwhile, is a textbook model of adolescent depression, what with his "not doing chores, hanging out in bars," and "bullseyeing womp rats," and later shows symptoms of prodromal schizophrenia, including auditory and visual hallucinations and grandiose delusions of saving the galaxy. (It turns out he's right, but that's beside the point.) Kylo Ren, too, exhibits much the same behavior as his grandfather, to the point of dressing up like him.
Talk about an unstable sense of self.
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But that's hardly the end of it. According to the pair, General Organa shows symptoms of histrionic personality disorder ...
"Inappropriate seduction" is definitely, um, one way to describe that.
C3PO, obsessive-compulsive disorder; Lando Calrissian, gambling addiction ...
Jar Jar Binks, ADHD; and Obi-Wan Kenobi, old-age depression and possibly dementia ...
Why else would he not "remember two droids that played a major part in his adventures 18 years earlier?"
Even Qui-Gon Jinn's isolation of and "tend and befriend" approach to baby Anakin, the authors say, is a useful model of "grooming" behavior. The only character who seems to get a clean bill of mental health is Han Solo, though they concede he "could be a high-functioning antisocial whose charms have blinded the authors of this paper to his true nature." He does tend to have that effect on people.
Top image: The Walt Disney Company
