Gone Girl Psychology

Gone Girl, a mysterious, thrilling novel, written by Gillian Flynn portrays madness and mental illness in multitudes of ways. The novel is a psychological thriller that contains abnormal behavior, mainly displayed in Amy, the protagonist of the story. Amy is a beautiful, intelligent, funny and loving wife to her husband Nick. Nick and Amy used to have a strong and loving relationship in New York, but when Nick's mother became ill the loving couple moved to Missouri so Nick could be with his mother. Once the newly wedded couple moved from New York to Missouri their relationship hit a turning point for the worse. Amy soon found out that Nick was having an affair with a younger, sexy woman; triggering her desire to make Nick's life miserable.
She is deceitful, self-absorbed, depicts extreme levels of vengefulness and goes to the same extreme levels including plotting her own suicide so that she can frame Nick for her death and Nick can then get the death sentence. These are traits that exhibit a psychopathic tendency (Hoff 117). She has an extreme, abnormal desire to get approval from her husband Nick and when she finds out that Nick is seeing another woman she is unable to bear it. Amy essentially creates a false world along with a false personality in order to get back at Nick. When they move to Missouri, Amy makes a few friends, appears kind and normal to most people. For a year she writes false information on her journal that will be used to incriminate Nick when she finally disappears and frames him for his murder . All this while Amy demonstrates incredible patience and holds up a fake persona perfectly exhibiting a lack of emotional connection with others that is a sign of sociopathy (Revelle
This makes it easy for her to manipulate the public since she has been practicing this since she was a child. Nick was also fooled and who he thought Amy was is not really who she is, but by the time he realizes that it’s too late. Therefore, Amy has been living with a void. One in which she has suppressed her true self which may have made her feel unloved. Amy knows she is not truly loved because she knows that she is not being her true self. This can be very depressing and Nick’s unfaithfulness paired with the loss of her job and the financial struggles push her to the edge and her madness comes out.
Killing her ex-boyfriend and not expressing any remorse portrays a psychopathic (madness) trait on Amy. Nick expresses abnormal behavior as well, such as his lack of sadness when Amy disappears however unlike Amy's behavior he does not come nearly as close to being termed madness (Tyrer, Geoffrey and Mike 720). After moving, he evidently doesn’t have the same affection for Amy and is cheating on her. Nick seems trapped in a relationship he doesn’t want and Amy is struggling to keep the relationship despite its dysfunctional