Psychological disorders at the Capwells
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If some ones were miraculously laid by (C.C., Ted...), it is verified that a certain psychological disorder reigns at the Capwells. Mason, Kelly and in last date Eden, these three descendants of the great Californian dynasty made proof in the show of major personality disorders, whose causes are clearly to look for more in a frustrated or culprit childhood that in a simple sudden life mishap. This is why we will pass on Sophia Capwell's amnesia, caused in 1969 by her fall from Lionel's boat and not by a disturbed psychological state. In the same way, we will leave on their side Elena Nikolas' psychopath impulses, more related to her abandoned child statute having caused an avenger appetite (certainly disproportionate), but by definition not very related to her education within the Capwell family.

Kelly, the fragile and dependent junior

In July 1984, Kelly Capwell is going to marry her fiancé Peter Flint, when her love of youth, Joe Perkins, leaves prison. Immediately, Kelly feels her love for Joe to awake, but fights to choke this feeling. She thinks that this love is unwelcome, whereas Joe was (wrongly) accused of the murder of her brother, that all the Capwell family get bound for her sentence, even obliging her to testify against him at the time of his lawsuit. It occurs that Kelly has difficulties to think by herself. Her reversal of feeling towards Joe in 1979 was dictated to her by her father. Her new fiancé in 1984 was still found to her by her father (we could see besides at which speed she manages to get detached from him to go back with Joe). Besides a long work will be needed from his part to make her join his search of the true killer of Channing Capwell Junior and to become thus her new mentor, moving her away from the yoke of the all-powerful C.C.. Joe's tragic death (and the same day Peter's) will plunge Kelly in a deep distress. The one who had become her voice, her thought, disappeared. Kelly will then need the assistance of the psychiatrist Marcello Armonti to help her to overcome from a mania persecution where she feels responsible for her mother's death, not having known to keep her far away from the danger the day of her death, sixteen years before.

She will need the help of a new suitor, once again of several years her elder, to help her to find a little stability and confidence in her. Nick Hartley will however be, in spite of him, the one who will involve Kelly in the intrigue which will open the door of her psychological instability. Harassed by Nick's brother, Dylan, who fell in love with her after a single night of impassioned love, Kelly causes his death by making him stumble from the picture window of the presidential suite of the Capwell hotel. Whereas she already broke with Nick, Kelly finds herself alone confronted with this new drama. Without guide to direct her life, she sinks then in a fold on herself, losing her attachment to reality (she does not know who is Nick any more, still believes Joe alive...), for finally taking refuge in a state of return in childhood, where the emotional safety that her father offered to her is her only exit door. Incompetent to deal with herself, not swearing any more but by C.C. with who she had recently succeeded in loosening the links, she is finally interned in a psychiatric hospital.

What are the reasons which could lead Kelly to such result ? Without question, it is the loss of references of which she was always completely dependent, because of the seizure that (unconsciously ?) exerted her father on her. Once Joe, Nick and Dylan far away, no nobody any more to guide her, to surround her, to encourage her, and Kelly lost her place.

Her return to very united links and a great complicity with her parents (without counting new men in her life, from Jeffrey to Connor, while passing by Robert and Cruz), will have reason of these disorders for the remainder of Kelly's life. Because, and more than for any other character, it is good to remain to live in Santa Barbara, at only a few blocks of mom and dad...

Mason, the forsaken and stemmed elder

"The family black sheep". This is how Mason Capwell is qualified by his father. Son of Pamela, C.C.'s first repudiated wife, Mason always had this half place between C.C.'s legitimate heir and bad kid. Through Mason, it is his wasted marriage with Pamela that C.C. sees, who will privilege for the future his second descent, that resulting from Sophia, in his eyes prompter to give birth and to raise his children. Elder in age, but junior in attention, Mason always had to fight to be remarked to his father's eyes, who had regards only for his favourites : Channing Junior and Eden. At six years old, forsaken by every one, Mason creates for himself an imaginary character, Sonny Sprockett, successful solitary cow-boy. He will be his comfort, his engine, his hope. Until he grows and, strengthened by his character force and his cynicism, gives up this Sonny to live life under his only name.

It is an accident (the fire of the Goletta convent in 1988), which makes reappear Sonny Sprockett in Mason's life. But this time, Sonny is not a conscious guest of Mason any more : he seems autonomous and gets the upper hand on his personality. At least on what remains of it. Because Mason is then only the shade of hiself. Made wise, in love and happy dad, rather entangled in love affairs that in money and blackmail intrigues that we knew to him, Mason is bored. When Gina DeMott Timmons finds him in Las Vegas, Mason is not Mason any more, but Sonny. Schizophrenic, but with a few moments of clearness (especially when he walks in front of a mirror !), Mason did not choose to yield to Sonny in order to come back in childhood, but to revive that what he really is : independent, charmer, avid of success... All the things he has in fact lost these last months.

Gina takes this occasion to use him in order to ruin C.C., and the same applies to Mason/Sonny. Bye bye Julia, Samantha and wise life, and hello women, alcohol and the return to the race for money at C.C.'s expense. Mason found in Sonny the taste of the adventure, the desire for fighting and the return to what built him : his fight of recognition towards his father. He takes his distances with his family, conceals compromising documents for C.C. to sell them to him at a big price, and even goes until marrying Gina ! It is a Mason a little unmannerly, fan of country music and at the limit of vulgarity that we discover, but at least he is alive !

Sonny will however be overcome, in February 1989, when love comes to catch up with it. Julia and Mary (at least her appearance as a guardian angel) will come to call back to reason the old Mason and will succeed in convincing him to go back to his old personality, more honest and altruistic, by putting a term at the refuge which Sonny represented. Consequently, Mason will take again his pleasant and loving existence, leaving behind him the rancour and cynicism that we knew to him. Dominated by women, Julia in head, Mason will remain until the end the shade of himself, leaving his true personality hidden in a driven back and buried Sonny... at least on the surface ?

Eden, a life of pretences

Even the strongest among all can hide huge psychological disorders. At the beginning of 1991, Eden Capwell is harassed by a man, Andre Wolfe, who says to belong to her past. After exchanges and introspection, Eden starts to act in ways which astonish her entourage : distant with Cruz Castillo, her husband, very aggressive with Sophia Capwell, her mother... Her sudden mood changes find their origin in the waking of a schizophrenic state that she knew in her youth, at the time when she lived in Europe. Lisa, her double then, get bound with the famous Andre to burglarise and conceal jewels to museums and private rich persons. If Lisa's rebirth is due to Andre's come back, what were in the beginning the release element which made her emerge from nothing ? The answer is to be found in her confrontations without end with her mother.

Because the years made forget the character in the beginning a little cheater and dishonest of Sophia. Her affair kept secret with Lionel Lockridge, whereas she was married with C.C. Capwell, her conscious pregnancy of her lover's baby... Only one another person was the witness of all these facts : Eden. In her childhood memories, Eden remembers to have been present with her brother Channing Junior on the Lockridge yacht and to have heard there Sophia to reveal all these secrecies to her lover. A dislike of her mother towards her behaviour then gained her, very quickly intensified by another discovery. The evening of 1969 where Sophia falls from the yacht of Lionel and is then regarded as dead for the sixteen years which will follow, a witness attends all the scene. Eden, on the shore, sees her mother swimming until the beach and surviving the drowning. Hidden behind her, the psychiatrist Marcello Armonti, who also assisted by chance to the scene, makes forget under hypnosis to Eden this event which seems to traumatise her. Eden thus forgets to have seen her mother leaving alive the drama, but keeps in a her unconscious a feeling of abandonment caused by the immediate departure of Sophia with Marcello, far from her husband and her children. Lisa is the character that Eden created to contain all her resentment, her anger towards Sophia.

Decided to get revenge against her family and friends that she considers as Sophia's accomplices, Eden then organizes her fictitious death while falling in the ocean from the top of a cliff, in front of the terrified eyes of Cruz, Sophia and C.C.. Always under the control of her schizophrenic state, Eden is decided to be over with Sophia. If Lisa does not have a role to play any more, another person of her past can help her : Channing Junior. And Eden then becomes her deceased brother, accidentally killed twelve years earlier by Sophia's hands. Eden convokes one evening her mother in a deserted Capwell residence, presents to her her grievances under the personality of Channing Junior, and puts a term at her desire of revenge while shooting at Sophia. Her mother dying on the floor, Eden definitively flees of Santa Barbara. It is only several months later, at the beginning of 1992, that she reassures her family on her state while explaining in a letter that she follows a curative treatment in a place kept secret, far from Santa Barbara.

Once again, we see that the origin of Eden's identity problems is to be sought in her family past. Like Kelly or Mason, these are states of emotional dependence, frustrations, secrecies which, remained subjacent for long years, get awaked one day and caused psychological catastrophes at the limit of irreversibility. Who would have thought the Capwell younger generation so psychologically fragile ? In these obvious educational deficiencies, Freud would certainly have found some pleasure...

Read also : Eden's fall . Eden's last appearance