“Lady Macbeth” is a 14-year-old female, currently inpatient at a hospital, for obsessive and compulsive behaviors. She reports that at age 13 these behaviors started to arise and she describes the rituals and thoughts that were present during this time. She says that she was afraid of germs that were on her clothes and on other things, so she would shake her clothes for a half hour before she felt comfortable putting them on her body. She stated that it would take her 6 hours to get ready to go out to do something socially because she would have to shower and would go over and over again cleaning herself, to the point that her hands would be cracked and bleeding. Soap and water became not enough for her to get clean so she began using rubbing …show more content…
It is present in a variety of contexts, as indicated by four or more of the following: Is preoccupied with details, rules, lists, order, organization, or schedules to the extent that that the major point of the activity is lost; Shows perfectionism that interferes with task completion; Is excessively devoted to work and productivity to the exclusion of leisure activities and friendships; Is over conscientious, scrupulous, and inflexible about matters of morality, ethics, or values; Is unable to discard worn-out or worthless objects even when they have no sentimental value; Is reluctant to delegate tasks or to work with others unless they submit to exactly his or her way of doing things; Adopts a miserly spending style toward self and others; And shows rigidity and stubbornness. From the information that “Lady Macbeth” shared about her behaviors and what the DSM-5 states about Obsessive-compulsive personality disorder, this client shares a lot of those traits and would most likely be diagnosed with this specific disorder. The most important factor in this diagnosis is the fact that her behaviors are having a negative effect on her life and interpersonal relationships. She appears not able to make and keep friends because has said that when she had been invited out the
How does Lady Macbeth change over the course of the play? Over the course of the play the characters of both Macbeth and his wife Lady Macbeth develop intensively. They share similar ambitions, but it is Lady Macbeth who dares to do unspeakable things to accomplish them. This creates great conflict within Lady Macbeth who does not conform to the traditional female stereotypes of her epoch.
In fact, “an excess of guilt is listed as a symptom in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (APA, 2013) for depression, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and eating disorders.” (Stroude 1) Having committed murders, it’s reasonable to assume that Lady Macbeth and Macbeth feel a considerably overwhelming amount of guilt, leading to PTSD and possibly other disorders. Although not officially listed as symptoms of each other in the DSM-5, Paranoia and PTSD are often diagnosed separately in the same people, meaning if someone has one of them, they're likely to have the other. Throughout the story, Macbeth becomes increasingly paranoid that someone will take the throne from him; therefore “they say, blood will have blood” (Macbeth 3.4.124).
Macbeth And His Schizophrenia Picture this: a world full of witches, prophecies, and bloodshed. Welcome to William Shakespeare's famous tragedy, Macbeth. Some may argue that Macbeth's erratic behavior and hallucinations throughout the play are signs of schizophrenia. However, a closer examination reveals that Macbeth's actions and psychological state are better understood within the framework of guilt, ambition, and moral deterioration. This essay will argue that Macbeth has schizophrenia and show how his character represents the tragic consequences of a flawed individual driven by his ambitions and inner demons.
However, her hands are physically clean, they are actually filthy of murders she causes. These flashbacks of reliving her tragedies of her life are causing her to lose sleep at night. In addition to PTSD, Lady Macbeth is also suffering from paranoid schizophrenia.
Shakespeare, like any other man in the 16th and 17th century, saw ambitious and dominant women as evil and even disturbing or disturbed. From Macbeth, we can see Shakespeare feels women should be challenged and punished because they are trying to change society. Nowadays these ambitious and dominant women are regarded as brave and respected because of their ambition, such as Lady Macbeth’s ambition to become Queen. Shakespeare presents Lady Macbeth as mentally disturbed.
Macbeth, written by William Shakespeare, is a play that mainly focuses on one common theme of insanity. Macbeth gradually becomes plagued by intense guilt as his desire for power drives him to attain his goals by any means necessary, including committing murder. He kills Duncan in cold blood in order to become King, has Banquo killed by three murderers because he wishes to maintain his position as King, and finally, he has Macduff’s family slaughtered. Each of these occurrences takes place because of Macbeth’s will to be King, or they are a result of his guilt. Nonetheless, they are all completed of his free will, which is what causes him to deteriorate mentally.
1. Lady Macbeth would be diagnosed with OCD. OCD is a disorder that is defined by obsessions and compulsions that consume more than 1 hour per day or cause clinically significant distress or impairment. Obsessions include recurrent and persistent thoughts, urges, or images. In this case, Lady Macbeth worries that something really bad is going to happen to her or her family, and these thoughts overwhelm her mind throughout the day.
One of Shakespeare’s superlative examples of a troubled mind is located in Macbeth. The impertinent character Lady Macbeth exhibited many symptoms of depression and antisocial personality disorder. While mental illness is generally developed through an accumulation of several events, as it was in Lady Macbeth’s case, it was definitely more profound after the murder of King Duncan. Prior to killing the king, Lady Macbeth unveiled sociopathic behavior through her negligence of others.
Bryanna E. McCool Mrs. Dean British Literature 25 January 2018 Mental Illness in Shakespeare’s Macbeth The Tragedy of Macbeth by William Shakespeare, a play wrought with prophecies, deception, guilt, and death, brings light to the symptoms of mental illnesses and their effects on the human brain’s ability to reason, trust, and act in times of pressure. Both Macbeth and his lady are plagued by mental illness, and the effects of their illness only grow as the play evolves. Macbeth’s symptoms of schizophrenia and anxiety, as well as Lady Macbeth’s anxiety as well as hallucinations that eventually push her to suicide prove that not only can mental illness alter the way a person sees a situation, but it can also drive them to harm others and themselves.
There are many people in the world that experience mental problems and therefore affecting their personality. Not everyone though is as bad as Macbeth when it comes to mental deterioration. Macbeth is a very self-centered man and it leads him to change the person he once was. Although it is not seen much in the beginning of Shakespeare's play “The Tragedy of Macbeth”, Macbeth’s mental state deteriorates as the play progresses, which can be seen when he is guilty of murdering King Duncan, being taunted by the ghost of Banquo, and his speech to the witches.
Those who are weak often manipulate others to do the things they cannot. Shakespeare's Tragedy of Macbeth describes two characters’ desire for power, Macbeth and Lady Macbeth. Throughout the play, Lady Macbeth displays many facets to her personality. She is such a diverse and complicated character that it is hard to know if she is truly evil or weak. However, no matter how strong and evil Lady Macbeth appears to be to others, her weakness is clearly apparent when she is alone.
The play, Macbeth, shows the among between sanity and insanity and the struggle between reason and delusion. Throughout this whole play, Macbeth slips into a state of lunacy slowing turning into a psychopath. The basis of understanding the play is through the first murder, King Duncan. Macbeth’s other two assassinations are just used as efforts to secure his throne. He begins accepting the evil inside him and succumbing to the temptation to murder and insanity.
The character is suffering and this depiction of Macbeth is believed to have a modern mental illness. Macbeth’s past definitely can support the idea of his disturbed state of mind as we watch the character change throughout the film.
Throughout literature, we see human characteristics in our characters. Characteristics such as punishment, downfall, middling character, free choice, and nobility. In this play called Macbeth we see all these characteristics fall into place throughout the good and bad choices acted on by our main character Macbeth. The play demonstrates how power will make or break character and lead to his/her own destruction by possessing a few of these characteristics. Macbeth demonstrates both literal and figurative nobility as the plot beings to grow throughout the play.
Celia Beyers Tinti Period 1/5 12 April 2015 Literary Analysis: Macbeth In Shakespeare’s play Macbeth, he presents the character of Lady Macbeth. Lady Macbeth is shown, as a character that schemes into making rebellious plots. She reveals the desire for wanting to lose her feminine qualities in order to be able to gain more masculine ones.