Examples Of Narcissism In Mommie Dearest

In the movie Mommie Dearest there are several portrayals of prominent psychological disorders. The main character Joan Crawford and actress, and singles mom, displays different disorders, each display increasing severity. Psychological disorders are behavior patterns or mental processes that cause serious personal suffering or interfere with a person’s ability to cope with everyday life (Rathus, 2010). Like in the movie Mommie Dearest, Joan Crawford has the stress of being the an actress and having to continue to funding her lavish lifestyle. This leads to her developing a multitude of disorders including an obsessive compulsive disorder, a borderline disorder, a bipolar disorder, and she becomes narcissistic, being in the limelight all the

Narcissism is when someone feels that they deserves admiration, they have fantasies of their own success, power, and intelligence. Joan is probably one of the most severe examples of narcissism, and she is really self-absorbed. She is an actress, movie-stars and feels as if she deserves respect from everyone, and she falsely promotes herself as a caring person, by adopting two children and by giving orphans presents on Christmas, when really she is not that kind of a person. One example of her never ending narcissism is not really a scene, but you see this throughout the whole movie, and that is that she has pictures of herself everywhere, over the mantle, on the piano, on several shelves, and she doesn’t just put them up for decoration, but she stares at them and admires herself. She had more pictures of herself scattered throughout the house, than she had of her two children. Another example of her narcissism is while doing an interview she states that her daughter was expelled from a boarding school, while in reality Joan pulled Christina from the school, because she had sexual relations with one of the students there, and Christina fights back and points that out in front of the interviewer. Joan is infuriated and pulls Christina aside, and begins to yell at her. What made Joan the most mad is that she told Christina not to ruin her interview, and then she goes on to ruin it. The