Borderline Psychopathology of the Lady Diana

Lee, Byung Wook

Abstract

The Lady Diana Spencer(1961-1997) was the first wife of Charles, Prince of Wales. She was a famous superstar from her fairy-like wedding to her subsequent divorce and sudden death in a car crash by the following paparazzi. Contemporary responses to Diana's life and death have been mixed but a popular fascination with her endures. Even though she had very positive public images, but her inner life was seriously chaotic and painful. Unlike outside figures, her early and adult life was very unhappy. In my view, her life was not dramatic, but erratic and tragic. In this paper, I explore her various borderline psychopathology. Some evidences reveal her depression, affective instability, chronic emptiness, rejection sensitivity, affect hunger, need-fear dilemma, over-idealization and devaluation, narcissistic as-if quality, impulsive angry out-burst, and some self-destructive tendencies including bulimia and reckless love affairs. Those borderline characteristics seemed to be originated from her very unhappy childhood. Although she was born in a distinghished aristocratic family, but she was an unwanted baby because her parent wanted to their heir son. Added to that, early parental divorce provoked her emotional crisis. She was a bad, naughty girl in her childhood and she did persons around her a shrewd turn. In doing so, incessantly she sounded out another's love, and it seemed to reveal her basic need-fear dilemma. Diana was trapped into the symbolic psychodrama of endless repetitive meeting and separation all through her life. Meaningful events on her psychological stage were an unwanted baby, cold and not-enough mothering, early parental divorce, pendular movement between father and mother, the appearance of step-mother, death of father, the appearance of an ideal prince and subsequent divorce, separation with her sons, the appearance of Camilla as a rival lover, the appearance of a symbolic Arab prince, and finally sudden death as eternal separation. But she had no place for her comfort and safety because she was placed on the borderline between her fantastic dream and a grim reality.