Fictional Characters with Mental Disabilities...

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I was watching 24 on TV the other night (we've only just gotten season 4), and the head of CTU 's daughter was on screen for a bit. I thought to myself, she's autistic. But as it turned out she was actually schizophrenic.
Heh

GA

As anyone who has read (or even seen) LotR (Lord of the Rings), I would say that Denethor (the steward of Gondor, AKA the crabby old guy in the third book/movie) has some problems. Only I haven't been able to figure out what they are. Anyone care to enlighten me?

That and major suicidal depression, otherwise why would he light himself in flames and throw himself off Minas Tirith?

What do you guys think Travis Bickle from Taxi Driver has? Do NOT say Asperger's; challenge yourself!! !

I say he's a lot like someone with scizotypal personality disorder. he has

-Ideas of reference (He sees a girl randomly and immediately falls in love, thinking she's his soulmate)
-peculair beliefs (he wants to kill a politician because a girl he went out with worked to support him- at the very least it lends credence to peculair beliefs, but the idea that killing the politician would somehow fix the relationship)
-Peculiar patterns of speech (if you count the tangent about filth he goes on- that was NOT normal!)
-Inappropriate affect (absolutely, again, the tangent on filth, and other things)
-odd behavior or appearance (he had both- remember the cowboy boots, though of course they were part of an odd behavior)
-lack of close friends

He might have even more of the symptoms of scizotypal depending on your perspective, but the DSM requires five, this is six.

I think he had Asperger's. Nothing else fits the bill quite as well.

Johnny Boy out of Mean Streets had ADD. The main bad guys out of Manhunter and One Hour Photo had asperger's and judging by the obsessions and the time they take to talk plus spaces inbetween words when they do talk (though this might have been for dramatization) the Blues Brothers were HFA.

My dad and his brothers used to count how many cars the Blues Brothers crashed during one episode. Trust me, the numbers were outrageous.

There's an Australian film called Somersault that was released last year. Not an enjoyable film but it asks some interesting questions. The little brother of a supporting character has Asperger's (the mother says so in a scene), but he seemed to be pretty autistic for an aspie.

There is a small sequence where his mother is showing him cards of faces and he has to identify the emotion expressed by the face (he's probably about 9 years old). The thing is, that the cards have the answer on them. Beneath the face is 'frown', 'smile', etc. He gets caught on a smile card, but couldn't logically connect the word 'smile' to what the word is identifying right above it. If I was unable to decipher the meaning of something, I would refer to that word and assume it's the answer, even if I don't understand why.

Just to wonder off topic for only a second, but have people on here had a similar experience? Difficulty in identifying a facial expression on a card when it is described in a word on the card itself?

I've been watching the TV show, 'Ed'. The main character, Ed appears to me to have AS. He's socially akward, despite the fact that he talks a lot. He doesn't get a lot of the humour that his friends and Co-Workers use. He also has trouble opening up to women. He also has a nutral facial expression and a flat affect to his voice.

Harry Potter would be schizophrenic because he believes in magic ... that puts him with Pug, Gandalf, Cat Chant, Haplo, Belgarath, Baxtenbrat, the White Witch and a few million other fictional magic users.

Stewie's future self from The Family Guy Movie definitly turns into a full-blown aspie. Of course, it wasnt that hard to figure out even when he was still a baby.

Wait, did I just say The Family Guy Movie? No, of course not! You didnt hear anything. . .