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Who Is Elliot Alderson

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Mr. Robot is a drama- thriller television series that plays on the cable network USA (http://www.usanetwork.com/mrrobot). The show stars Rami Malek whose character is Elliot Alderson, a young cyber security technician living in New York City who takes a secretive role as a computer hacker against hidden criminals. Although Elliot is a talented social engineer and develops connections with people, through his illicit activity, he has trouble doing the same in his personal life and suffers from depression and social anxiety disorder. To combat feelings of hopelessness and loneliness he self-medicates with morphine and uses suboxone to resist symptoms of withdrawal. In the show he is also seen taking recreational drugs like ecstasy. While Elliot’s …show more content…

To my knowledge, I would assume he is experiencing positive symptoms of schizophrenia, specifically delusions of persecution, because Elliot believes he is being followed or plotted against. His grotesque thoughts and beliefs were also accompanied by visual hallucinations of his father, who died of leukemia when Elliot was a young boy. He was then left in the sole care of his mother, whom he had a poor relationship with and would often abuse him. What’s interesting is that Elliot doesn’t recognize his father through these illusions and gave him a different narrative to play. He forgets an important chunk of his childhood, signaling retrograde amnesia and unconsciously assigns unusual roles for the people in his past. At the end, we learn that Elliot was never a victim to these hallucinations but suffers from dissociative identity disorder. By taking on his father’s personality and disguising him as another person, he was able to store away any memories about his father that are difficult to handle. Instead of suffering through the idea that he is alone, Elliot chooses to defuse these feelings of past trauma. In summary, being able to experience an alter personality was a coping mechanism for

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