Sherlock Holmes and Borderline Personality Disorder

Long before the mental health professionals came up with borderline personality Sir Arthur Conan Doyle gave us the template. When I was first read a Study in Scarlet I related to Sherlock on a level I at the time I didn't understand. After being diagnosed with it I realized that Holmes and I shared a common illness. Holmes presented as the supreme self centered man but he wasn't. Holmes believed in his work and his mind and nothing else. Holmes particular life philosophy was one we only imagine people have. Not to care about the solar system or who the President of the US is foreign to most people. Not me. I understand that there are certain things I am interested in and most things I am not. Yes I love history but only certain history. Holmes was the original if it doesn't apply let if fly man. Watson was Holmes emotional stability. He was the everyman full of feeling emotion, empathy, and sympathy all the things I don't. I mean Holmes doesn't have. As big as Holmes ego was it was misplaced in most peoples minds. We tend to mistake ego from self confidence. Holmes was more then willing to admit his shortcomings even embrace them. When Irene Adler beat him he readily admitted it with glee he had found a soul mate who was unavailable. He couldn't Love he knew that emotion was as foreign to him as the moon. Yet he continued. The thing about Holmes and his disease is that he coped with it in a healthy way. He gave his talents to the world not out of some altruistic motive but out of the pursuit of the puzzle. In the story the sign of four we see his cocaine use. But he did cocaine for one reason it fulfilled the need for intellectual stimulation. His mind when stagnant was a bad place to be. Every addict knows this. Holmes had even begun to explain the reason addicts are addicted. Boredom. You see Holmes hated being bored. Long before Gorski or Bill W. Holmes knew what a bored mind is a bad place to be. Let's be clear Holmes was not a cocaine addict. He met none of the criteria for substance abuse or dependence. On the other hand he met almost all the requirements for BPD. The hard part of diagnosing Holmes through the books is the lack of information pertaining to his past. Yet we see his emotional dis-regulation, He appears to have a lack of emotion and yet several times it comes out especially about his relationship to Watson. He keeps his feelings behind a constant mask of cynicism and stoic insults often reminding Watson how wrong he was in a observation. And yet in the story "The Adventure of the Three Garridebs" his true feelings are unmasked when Watson is wounded. Giving us and Watson a rare look into his feelings we find "It was worth a wound; it was worth many wounds; to know the depth of loyalty and love which lay behind that cold mask. The clear, hard eyes were dimmed for a moment, and the firm lips were shaking. For the one and only time I caught a glimpse of a great heart as well as of a great brain. All my years of humble but single-minded service culminated in that moment of revelation." So Holmes is capable of love but what makes him afraid of it. The brief biography of Holmes points to several BPD indicators. He comes from a family of country squires and is said to be related to Venet the French artist. We are also familiar with Mycroft who Holmes freely admits is his master in deduction. It is possible given the information that Holmes was predisposed to BPD. A family as artistic and smart as his must have had many emotional dis regulation factors. We can only imagine that Holmes is afraid of Love because of abandonment real or imagined.

Holmes also meets the criteria with his unstable moods. The lack of a case or a case gone wrong can bring on long bouts of depression where he copes with his cocaine or aimless bowing on his violin. This is where the fallacy of addiction comes in. Holmes was great at rationalizing his behaviors. Hence the cocaine. I cannot live without brain-work. What else is there to live for? Stand at the window here. "Was ever such a dreary, dismal, unprofitable world? See how the yellow fog swirls down the street and drifts across the dun-colored houses. What could be more hopelessly prosaic and material? What is the use of having powers, Doctor, when one has no field upon which to exert them? Crime is commonplace, existence is commonplace, and no qualities save those which are commonplace have any function upon earth." We here see the angst in which every Borderline feels. The uselessness of a life and world we feel outside of. On the other hand there was a slight optimism in Holmes with a pessimistic tint. Although Holmes was never suicidal outwardly we can guess with his emotional mood swings and personality that at some point it may have crossed his mind. The difference between us is that Holmes had to see how the puzzle ended I really don't care how it ends. BPD is an insidious disease it takes an otherwise rational man or woman and turns them into a emotional jello mold. There is a small part of Borderlines that build such rational walls that they are truly unable to feel most emotions that was the kind Holmes was and the kind I am to a degree. But one thing is for sure just like Homes I have chosen to live in the solution today just not the 7% solution.