10 Disney Characters With Obvious Mental Disorders
Quick: if you had to name a Disney character with a mental disorder, who would it be?
The Evil Queen?
Maleficent?
Even though some of the villains suffer from clear-cut mental disorders, the heroes do
too.
The following are our picks for ten Disney characters with obvious issues.
Ariel -- Kleptomania The Little Mermaid is the story of a young
mer-girl who liked to bur-gle ships.
Get it?
While Ariel might come off as sweet and innocent, think of the number of times she explored
sunken ships and took what she wanted from them.
She never stopped to think about someone attempting to recover the belongings.
Ariel was almost obsessive in her quest for treasures, so in addition to kleptomania,
she was well on her way to becoming a horder, too.
Gaston -- Narcissism "No one's slick as Gaston, no one's quick
as Gaston, no one's neck's as incredibly thick as Gaston's."
You may remember Gaston as the self-absorbed muscle-head from Beauty and the Beast, but
there was more going on than an abundance of confidence.
Gaston suffers from all the hallmarks of Narcissistic Personality Disorder.
His exaggerated sense of self importance and love of the grandiose ends up being his downfall
at the end of the movie.
Scar -- Sociopathy Remember the movie with the lion cub and his
lovable uncle?
Yeah, neither do we.
The Lion King is marked by tragedy that's directly caused by Simba's uncle Scar, a character
that clearly suffers from sociopathy.
He has all the symptoms: superficial charm, a lack of empathy, and a compulsive need to
control others.
He leads through fear, not loyalty -- something that backfires for him at the end of the film.
Peter Pan -- Peter Pan Syndrome Puer aeternus is Latin for "eternal boy" and
refers to the pop-psychology condition known as "Peter Pan Syndrome."
The simple explanation is a man that refuses to grow up.
While it may be easy to crack a joke about hipsters, the term refers to someone of adulthood
or older whose emotional maturity has remained at an adolescence level.
However, this condition isn't recognized by psychologists as a real disorder, so the jury
is still out -- but it was named for Peter Pan, so it's good enough for us.
Moana -- Fantasy Prone Personality Moana, the heroine from Disney's newest film
with the same name, is a classic example of someone with a fantasy prone personality.
When her nation is faced with a threat, she doesn't help prepare; instead, she sets off
on a reckless journey in search of a Polynesian demigod to help her.
And because this is Disney, she actually finds him.
That said, it's probably best if you put up sandbags to stop a flood instead of doing
a rain dance to appease the hurricane.
Pinocchio -- Pathological Liar Come on, you knew this was coming.
After all, lying is kind of Pinocchio's shtick.
If he didn't lie, the entire movie would be about an old man playing with a doll!
Which now that we think about it it, is kind of creepy in and of itself.
Pinocchio definitely needed help telling the truth, because this little guy would lie about
anything.
Fortunately, or not, for him, his nose was the perfect tell when he was lying.
Pinocchio would be a really bad poker player.
Elsa -- Agoraphobia I'd be scared of people too if the slightest
moment of panic meant turning them into popsicles.
Elsa's fear of the public is well-founded, given her inability to control her powers;
when Anna pushes her too far at the start of the film, she nearly skewers half the party
guests with pointy shards of ice.
There is a happy ending, though; by the end of the film, Elsa learns to control her powers
and turns the castle courtyard into an ice-skating rink.
Wow, saying that out loud really makes you question the plot of Frozen, doesn't it?
Mulan -- Atelophobia If you think you're under a lot of pressure,
it's nothing compared to what the daughter-turned-crossdressing-warrior Mulan felt.
And for good reason, too; she suffered from atelophobia, which is literally the fear of
being imperfect.
Seems a bit like a silly fear, right?
That fear is what drove her to take her father's place, to become the best soldier she could
be, and to face down the Huns and bring victory to China.
Without her fear, she never would have succeeded.
That said, it's still a clearly undiagnosed disorder.
She should really get that looked ati.
Anna -- ADHD "Do you wanna build a snowman?
Ooh, squirrel!"
Anna may be the lovably hero of Frozen, but she's also rash, reckless, and has a hard
time staying focused.
Her topics of conversation seem to shift randomly, and her energetic nature lands her in trouble
more often than not.
Sound familiar?
She's a clear-cut case of someone with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.
Maybe the only time she's calm is when she is frozen at the climax of the film.
Ice cold, right?
Belle -- Bibliomania While Belle is often thought to have Stockholm
Syndrome, there's another disorder that underlies her behavior: bibliomania.
Not familiar with it?
Bibliomania is a condition where someone obsessively buys books.
Remember her dancing through the village with an armful of books and the villagers remarking
on her love of reading?
She really only fell in love with Beast for his library.
But here's a secret: so did we.
What do you think?
Mental disorders or not?
If you feel like we missed a few, or there were more glaring disorders that should have
taken the limelight, comment below and give us your thoughts!
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