What 'Gone Girl' Does (and Doesn't) Tell Us About Mental Illness

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By Anna Medaris Miller for U.S. News & World Report

"Gone Girl’s" Amy Elliott Dunne is a lot of things. She’s beautiful, she’s manipulative, she’s self-centered – and she’s very decidedly not normal.

Dunne also could be a lot of things. She could be a psychopath, she could have narcissistic personality disorder – or she could just be a girl gone wild.

“People tend to think about this kind of stuff as you’re psychopathic or you’re not, and there really is no bright line in the sand,” says John F. Edens, a psychology professor at Texas A&M University who studies forensic psychology and psychopathy. “It’s really kind of a bell curve in terms of psychopathic traits, kind of like intelligence.” Lots of us have some psychopathic tendencies, he says.

But no matter her diagnosis, “Gone Girl’s” central character needs professional help. Here’s what four psychologists say we can learn from Dunne’s behavior. (Warning: Spoilers ahead.)

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The Psychopathy Expert

The scene: Dunne frames her husband for her murder, driven, among many things, by revenge for his infidelity. Along the way, she kills a man and remains unconcerned about hurting her family, getting into legal trouble or, frankly, much of anything else.

The take: Such fearlessness is a defining characteristic of psychopaths, who are “incredibly daring and take risks and are unafraid of negative consequences,” Edens says.

Dunne’s lack of concern for others, too, fits the bill. Psychopaths “tend to be very self-absorbed, and really just treat people as objects,” Edens says. “They lack the ability or interest in having genuine emotional connections with other people.”

But Dunne’s gender complicates things: While psychopathy is believed to affect about 1 percent of the U.S. population, little is known about female psychopaths, in part because most studies on the subject involve mostly male criminals, Edens says. For the same reason, it’s also tough to know much about noncriminal psychopaths – sometimes called “functioning” or “successful” psychopaths or sociopaths.

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“Highly psychopathic people – at least for short periods of time and maybe even long periods of time – can come across as really very normal,” Edens says. “And not only normal, but even sort of socially outgoing.” In other words, just because Dunne is charming at times doesn’t mean she’s not psychopathic. On the flip side, “just being sort of impulsive in and of itself or engaging in crime doesn’t mean that someone’s psychopathic – it’s really a combination of all these types of characteristics,” Edens says.

Either way, Edens says, it’s not so important whether or not Dunne is a psychopath – a term even well-trained professionals disagree on. “There is still a lot of wiggle room and a lot of debate and disagreement, and a lot of times it comes down to professional judgment” when determining who is or isn’t psychopathic in the criminal justice system, he says. “And professionals tend to disagree quite a lot.”What matters more than the label is how the person treats others, Edens says. “At the end of the day, [a label] won’t make too much of a difference in terms of how they interact with you.”

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The Narcissism Expert

The scene: Dunne goes to her husband’s bar to surprise him – and sees him kissing and leaving with another woman. Dunne seeks revenge by framing him for murder after months of fastidious planning.

The take: “Classic narcissism,” says narcissism expert W. Keith Campbell, who heads the University of Georgia’s psychology department, of Dunne’s desire for revenge. “What you see with narcissism is people who … if somebody cheats on you, breaks up with you, it can spark a lot of aggression or desire for revenge.”

Dunne’s desire to be the center of attention – perhaps best illustrated by the enjoyment she gets out of watching news coverage of her disappearance – is also characteristic of someone with narcissistic personality disorder, Campbell says. While many people can be arrogant or self-centered at times, it’s only in extreme situations such as this one that narcissism crosses the line to a disorder, something only a few percent of the population has, he says.

“In a case where you’re faking your own death, murdering people, that would be probably diagnosable,” Campbell says.

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Dunne’s meticulous planning also fits a trait known as Machiavellianism, Campbell says. Along with psychopathy and narcissism, this characteristic is included in what mental health professionals call “the dark triad of traits,’” he says. “In real life they do correlate, they do blend together.”

Of course in real life, too, people with mental illness are rarely violent. Recent research has shown that adults with mental illness are more likely to be victims of violence than to be perpetrators. And in a study this year of crimes committed by people with serious mental disorders, only 7.5 percent were directly related to symptoms of the illness.

"In the movies, they have a tendency to portray these ‘criminal masterminds,’ and they don’t exist in nature as much as they do in the theater," says Campbell of the brilliance depicted in characters like Dunne. "It’s just less common, but they’re such interesting characters because they’re so different than they appear that they’re fascinating."

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The Relationship Professionals

The scene: After returning home, Dunne gets pregnant through in vitro fertilization using sperm her husband had frozen before her disappearance. Her main motivation? To rope him into staying in the relationship.

The take: Fortunately, this type of extreme manipulation to keep someone in a relationship is unusual, says Terri Orbuch, a social psychology researcher at the University of Michigan also known as “The Love Doctor.” More common, however, is the (false) expectation that children will make a relationship better. In reality, research shows that marital satisfaction and quality decline when couples have a child – “and it declines with every child you have,” Orbuch says.

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The pregnancy-with-an-ulterior-motive is far from the Dunnes’ only relationship woe. There’s also tension about money – the most common source of conflict among couples, according to Orbuch’s research – and, of course, there’s Nick Dunne’s affair.

“When trust is broken, people respond in different ways,” Orbuch says. “Some people become very depressed and they retreat, and other people become very angry and revengeful and they want to get back at their partner.” While one-quarter of couples can rebuild trust after such a betrayal, Orbuch says it doesn’t come without something the Dunnes lack: strong communication.

Another example of what not to do in a relationship is Dunne’s anniversary tradition with her husband. She leaves clues about moments in their relationship like where they shared kisses, but they’re often too obscure for her husband to solve. To him, it’s more of a test he is destined to fail than a cute tradition.

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“A neurotic person will set up their partner to fail in the relationship; a healthy partner actually sets up their partner to succeed,” says relationship expert Diana Kirschner, a psychologist in New York and CEO of the site “Love in 90 Days.” Healthier couples would be direct with each other about what they want by saying, “Here’s what I’d like you to do, I’d like some appreciation, I’d love you to say this or that or do this or that,” Kirschner says. “And so the healthy partner is setting up a person to succeed in making them happy.”