Breaking Bad Character Analysis: Walter White | Mental Health & Personality

welcome to my scientifically informed insider look at mental health topics if you find this video to be interesting or helpful please like it and subscribe to my channel closest doctor grande today's question asks why can analyze the mental health and personality characteristics of the Walter White character from the series Breaking Bad so Breaking Bad was a series that ran from 2008 to 2013 had five seasons 62 episodes and there's also a movie that came out in 2019 the kind of extended Breaking Bad named El Camino so this is a good point to issue a spoiler alert for the entire series Breaking Bad and for the movie El Camino so I'll go through a summary of the series then take a look at the development of the character Walter White and then give my opinions on the series so first a summary I think that what made Breaking Bad special was really the character development and the general progression of the show the tone really grew darker as the series progressed when we first meet Walter White he's somewhat melancholy maybe just a little sad non-assertive he's a high school chemistry teacher who works part-time at a car wash he's bored with what seems like an ordinary life he seems to have an interest in a more exciting life or at least an interest in the prospect of making a lot of money and we find out later that he blew his big opportunity for fame and fortune when he sold the share of a company they co-founded for five thousand dollars in that company would later on earn billions and revenue we see that Walter is diagnosed with stage 3 a lung cancer and given about two years to live and this seems to be the impetus for Walter to develop the dark side of his personality and chase fantasies they would never dreamed of initially of course his reasons for getting involved in crime would be to support his family to make sure his family was cared for after he was gone so the series follows his exploits through learning about a life of crime specifically how to manufacture and distribute methamphetamine while at the same time acknowledging accepting his own mortality the consequences of choices and we see all these decaying relationships that he has with his family members and associates we see the series takes on heavy content fairly early not just with a diagnosis of cancer but with Walt committing murder and eventually Jesse committing murder as well Walt's life of crime intensifies he commits more murders he makes more money and he faces increasingly severe consequences and complications because of his behavior toward the end we see that Walt is unable to maintain really any meaningful relationships he's on the run from the law and the last episode takes revenge on the people that killed his brother-in-law Hank Schrader who of course works for the DEA now Hank was killed because of Walt's behavior although Walt didn't really seem to intend that to happen and of course Hank was killed because of some mistakes he made as well like not telling the DA about his investigation into Walt also near the end we see that Walter arranges to kill Jesse his on-again off-again partner in crime and we see that cancer does not ultimately kill Walt rather he's killed by around from an m60 machine gun that he took to the abdomen which was remotely fired by him to kill his adversaries so at the very end we see that his brother-in-law is dead his wife Skyler is left with legal problems from her involvement in laundering Walt's money his son Waldron EUR or Flynn hates him his partner Jesse and his attorney Saul are on the run from the law although we see that things work out for Jesse in the movie El Camino right eventually they work out so really essentially won't leaves a trail of destruction so now taking a look at the character development of Walter White so Walt's character progresses a number of ways across many dimensions I'm going to analyze the progression from three points of view which of course have some overlap between them his progression through psychopathology and the changes in his personality we see during the series his changes in terms of morality and values the different way he approaches the moral struggles of his life of crime and the changes in how he relates to other people how he manages relationships so first taking a look at the mental health and personality early in the series we see that Walt appears to be mildly depressed bored stuck in a routine and he appears to have low self-esteem there's some hint obsessive-compulsive personality traits like being somewhat rigid and perfectionistic he's careful and how he plans things and tries to minimize risk including his involvement with the manufacturing of substances but then Walter becomes increasingly ambitious and at the same time increasingly impulsive making decisions based on emotions like arguing with the police officer who pulled him over for the broken windshield or lighting a brand new car on fire in a parking lot we see a lot of evidence that supports the idea that Walt has obsessive-compulsive personality traits like the fact that he is disgusted by Jesse's imprecise behavior and of course that episode with the fly kind of a controversial episode in the series because I think it was so slow-moving but it really did illustrate the point with his obsessions now we see that he slowly develops dark triad traits narcissism psychopathy and Machiavellianism with narcissism we see that he develops a sense of entitlement he wants to have control over everything he doesn't want to split money with anybody else he wants to have it his way be the boss we see that he's arrogant and demands admiration for example that famous episode where he wants the other criminals there to say his name Heisenberg the name he uses he has fantasies of success in power so with this episode he talks to Jesse about how he's really not in the business of making money or substances but rather Walt wants to build an empire we see evidence of psychopathy in his lying behavior he lies so much in the series it's really hard to keep track of them all especially to his family we see sensation-seeking like leasing the Chrysler 300 and driving fast as well as impulsive and aggressive behavior like getting into a physical fight with Jesse now in terms of machiavellianism we see he becomes highly effective at manipulation including his risky manipulation of Jesse involving that poison to get Jesse's help in challenging Gus we see that he developed some level of impulse control right so he has impulsivity but he also learns to control some impulses like planting the rice in order to kill Lydia and building that rig for the m60 so he can take out his adversaries in the end so diagnostically speaking this gets kind of tricky the diagnosis that what would be eligible for namely narcissistic and antisocial personality disorders are not a good fit based on what we know of his early history which of course is not much but they're an excellent fit for how we see him toward the end of the series the audience is led to believe that Walt was a straight shooter before turning to a life of crime yeah Bedell he wasn't narcissistic or psychopathic but if we put this aside and we don't consider what he may have been like before we first see him in the series then he would likely meet the full criteria for both narcissistic personality and antisocial person I saw another real possibility of course is obsessive-compulsive personality sorter OCPD there's this idea that he may have had this the whole time the obsessive compulsive traits perhaps are not new we're just seeing them in a different way as well it goes through all these different adventures the traits associated with narcissistic personality and antisocial person I swear appear to be new well that covers the mental health but what about Walt's personality I'm going to map his personality using the five factor model so I remember this through the acronym ocean openness to experience conscientiousness extraversion agreeableness and neuroticism so in terms of openness to experience Woolf has moderate to low openness to experience he's intellectually curious and he does get more adventurous toward the end of the series but in general he doesn't tend to think abstractly he tends to have kind of rigid thinking now in terms of conscientiousness he's highly conscientious which of course wouldn't be a surprise if he was eligible for obsessive-compulsive personality disorder we see these deliberate organized he likes things to run on a schedule in terms of extraversion we see here he's mid-range or low he tends to work well alone he doesn't mind staying to himself but he can also be sociable when required now in terms of agreeableness this is also interesting early on we see he's round mid-range maybe a little bit low but of course toward the end he becomes quite disagreeable his lack of trust in particular tends to stand out although to be fair his lack of trust serves him well in his line of work having lack of trust actually makes sense a lot of people were trying to get him although I think his antagonism caused a lot of that as well now with neuroticism this one also is a little bit difficult to really nail down throughout the series I would say that most of the time he had mid-range neuroticism but there are definitely times when he seems to be more subject to feelings of depression anxiety and anger anger really tends to stand out here for wall so that takes care of mental health and personality what about morality and values well we see initially that Walt doesn't really seem to like the life of crime it's miserable it's a dirty business he goes out of his way to avoid confrontation he's constantly reminded about how his choices are immoral especially considering that Hank his brother-in-law is a DEA agent welcome it's a lot of criminal offences but his changing attitudes toward morality can really be explored best I think by looking specifically at the many murders that he committed that's not the only area of moral change but I think it's important it's also important to mention that we don't know how many people really died from the substance use right Walt was manufacturing methamphetamine that of course would cause death and also on top of that other people probably were indirectly harmed by Walt in other ways right and his other criminal dealings so a lot of death and destruction before we even get to the murders that he directly participated in so moving back to early in the series we see that his first killing was really self-defense he used phosphine gas to affect two people that were probably going to kill him one of them dies immediately and one survives the one that survived goes by the name krazy-8 and we see that he lives initially and Walt has kind of a moral dilemma about whether he should kill krazy-8 or not and really chooses to let him go but then finds out that krazy-8 was planning to kill Walt so Walt knows that if he releases krazy-8 then Walt is going to die so we see kind of a tough moral situation of course he could have just stopped at any time and called the police but that doesn't seem to be an option for him the way he's thinking so eventually he decides to kill krazy-8 this was of course murder but again there's a dilemma created here so that we don't necessarily think Walt is a terrible person at this point right the audience is a little bit torn by that particular murder I think the big turning point was when he watched Jane die right so we see that Jane and Jesse are in the bed and Walt makes contact with Jesse physically and Jane cut falls over on her back and then she vomits and starts choking on that vomit and of course Walt could have easily saved her life but he chose not to for a few different reasons she was blackmailing him and she was kind of tearing Jesse away from him so he was losing his partner so we see in that moment that we kind of expect Walt to do what he did right he's looking at Jane choking and we sees a little bit torn but I think most people watching probably believed what was gonna let her die but even still this act was surprising so you're kind of expected and it's surprising at the same time this is when Walt really begins his descent into evil and reaches a tipping point the die is cast there's no return for Walter now and this is punctuated in the series by this cascade of events from Jane's death to the plane crash that kills 167 people so really highlighting the significance of this particular decision so after this killing becomes a lot easier for Walter we see that he kills two of Gus's dealers both were run over one he shot after he ran him over this was first-degree murder he did it to protect Jesse and maybe some other reasons as well maybe his own self-interest we see next essentially he kills Gale he orders Jesse to kill gale he did it to protect himself and Jesse this one's a little bit trickier but still definitely murder we see next he kills Gus tio and Tyrus with an explosion he plant the explosive that killed them he did to protect himself yes but it was still first-degree murder we see after this he kills two of Gus's nameless guards to save Jessie and to destroy the lab the next murder was of Mike Gus's main enforcer we see that Mike wouldn't give Walter information on nine of Gus's employees who knew too much he wouldn't provide the identities to Walt murdering Mike really didn't help Walt to get the information although it may have prevented revenge like Mike might have come back and killed Walt after Walt killed those nine people so this murders a little bit murky as well but again definitely murder we see that then Walt kills those nine employees plus Mike's attorney who is a liability to Walt as well in this really sophisticated orchestrated hit but it was other people that carried out the murders what was the ringleader and didn't do much except paying the money but still kind of made him out to be more or less like The Godfather like a Mafia figure next we see that Walt causes the death of Hank Schrader and Steve Gomez both of course worked with the DEA Hanks Walt's brother-in-law and at the same time orders Jesse to be killed so that was really another turning point we see that Walt was very upset that Hank was murdered and he was upset at Jesse and that's why he ordered Jesse be killed so we see kind of another level of moral breakdown for Walt he has remorse about Hank though and that's important I think that plays a part in his final killings so next we see this gang that was holding Jesse this was not technically Walt's last murder Lydia would be but it's his last kind of big move in the series we see the amounts of m62 this rig that moves it back and forth kind of this elaborate thing by putting in his trunk and then ducking as he remotely activate cm16 wipes out most everybody with that machine gun and of course Lydia dies after this because Walt poisoned her a little bit before this he carried out this murder of the gang essentially to avenge Hank and also to free Jesse so from Walt's point of view it was kind of twisted at the end of course but maybe he felt from his spective he was doing something good he was kind of setting things right through those final murders creating an environment where again Hank was avenged and where jesse could be free and then we moved to the last murder which technically would be Walt himself so it probably wasn't his intent to get hit by one of the m60 rounds but he knew that was going to be his last big move he went there knowing that that attack in one sense or another would cost him his life he wasn't going to die the cancer but rather he was going to die that night so we see kind of the destructiveness of Walt's behavior and his transformation in terms of morality really comes to this final point where all is lost again including his own life so that covers morality now moving to Walt's relationships what we see has a number of key relationships in the series I'm not really touching on everybody he knew or interacted with but the characters that I believe are really central to kind of analyzing the changes in Walt I'll start with Walt Jr we see that the beginning Walt Jr supports and loves Walt really he's his biggest fan and eventually of course comes to hate him he hangs up on him toward the very end Skyler his wife we see that she loves him in the beginning but then develops a fear for him a distrust for him and eventually hatred at the very end we see that she softens up a little really very little but mostly I think still hates Walt right through his death then we have Hank Hanks a big fan he likes Walt thinks of them as a bit quirky and unusual but they get along then we see toward the end he wants Walt to be in prison for life now it's interesting about the relationship with Hank of course as it all hinges on Hank finding that Walt Whitman book the book that Walter White left in his own bathroom Hank was using the bathroom finds that book so this becomes kind of on or off right Hank liked him and then he didn't right it was very sudden so we don't really see the gradual progression with Hank as we do with many of the other characters moving on to Saul Walt's attorney we see it in the beginning all kind of tolerates Walt after Walt and Jesse were gonna kill Saul he learns to tolerate him after that but then he actually walks out on him in the end right Saul goes to live in Nebraska and Walt was left alone until eventually he goes to New Hampshire before the very end of the series next we have Gus I think Gus respected Walt he liked the fact that Walt was organized and careful he did not respect Walt's choice of partners and Jesse but either way we see that Gus moves from this position to wanting Walt dead kind of a popular position for a lot of characters in the series similarly we see Mike I don't think Mike really ever likable but again by the end he really tends to hate him and when I find really interesting here with Mike is at the very end of course we see that Walt suits him but Mike's still alive he's dying and he's annoyed even at that point even in his own death as he's dying he's annoyed that Walt and asks well just to let him die in peace right so that's how bad Walt was even in the end as Mike was dying he didn't want to hear anything from Walt it was just that annoyed with him he didn't wanna get revenge or say something in polite he just wanted Walt to leave him alone I think that was an important scene in terms of like really figuring out how badly the characters hated Walt and that brings me to the last relationship I'll cover with Walt which of course is Jesse which i think is really the crucial relationship for a wall in the series he's confused by Walt early on why is he doing this why is this chemistry teacher want to help create substances and get into crime but he maintains respect for Walt through most of the series and we see really through the entire series he refers to Walt as mr. white now what was always hard on Jesse but I think he loved him and we see additional evidence of this in the El Camino moving a little bit there was a small degree of affection Walt wanted Jesse to have a future I think before the love formed for Walt toward Jesse he really needed Jesse I think that's where they kind of started he sold Jesse as an important ally and out of that need and other things that were going on he grew to really have an affection toward him now he manipulates Jessie into helping him with that whole thing with the poison he orders Jessie to be taken out at the end of course but he tells him the truth and that scene about Jane so in a sense Walt has some level of respect even as he thinks he's doing something that's gonna cause Jessie's death and of course ultimately we see that Walt saves Jessie although I think an important motivator for killing that gang was revenge because they killed Hank but either way that action does save Jessie and it gives Jessie an opportunity to kill him right because he knows Jessie's angry Adam so in a sense he wants to make things right with Jessie he wants an absolution as well and of course we see that Jessie does not give that to him and ultimately of course Walt dies from that round from the m60 so my thoughts on the show right so I thought that Breaking Bad was really excellent it was an excellent show as well acted well-written it had kind of creative angles with the camera which sometimes were good and sometimes weren't but in general I kind of liked them it took risks with character development which I think paid off especially the risks they took with Walt I learned a lot about chemistry from watching a series anytime a series like that can also be educational I think that's a good thing it showed the dark side of substance use and more serious substance related crime so the show really didn't make any effort to glorify this particular type of criminal activity this particular type of life now we see in a series a few slow episodes but nothing that really offsets the brilliance of the show I think the one that stands out as I mentioned before was the episode with the fly but it does actually contribute to understanding wall so it wasn't a silly bad for that it was just kind of boring compared to the other episodes I hope that this particular show kind of inspires other writers to take chances especially as it relates to mental health personality and the changes to occur in relationships so we know whenever I analyze fictional characters they'll always be a variety of opinions please put any opinions and thoughts in the comment section they're sure to generate a really interesting dialogue as always I hope you found this description of the Walter White character and Breaking Bad to be interesting thanks for watching

Channel: Dr. Todd Grande

Views: 82,426

Rating: 4.929184 out of 5

Keywords: Breaking Bad, Walter White, Bryan Cranston, El Camino, Jesse Pinkman, Aaron Paul, Skyler White, Anna Gun, Hank Schrader, Saul Goodman, Gus Fring, Narcissism, narcissist, narcissistic, narcissistic relationship, toxic relationship, dark triad, narcissistic personality disorder, antisocial personality disorder, obsessive-compulsive personality disorder, manipulation, arrogance, self-centeredness, fantasy, psychopathy, Machiavellianism, OCPD

Id: 8zrBZezqo_Y

Length: 22min 22sec (1342 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 23 2019