Patient: Sarah Michelle Gellar

Age: 24

DOB: April 14, 1977

Chief Complaint: “It's really hard to be a vampire slayer if you’re scared of cemeteries.” (Rolling Stone, April, 1998)

Social History: Sarah was raised an only child by her schoolteacher mother, Rosellen, in New York City. At age four, she was discovered in a restaurant and landed her first film role a week later.

She subsequently starred in over 100 commercials, including Shake ‘n’ Bake and the infamous Burger King campaign that marked the beginning of blatantly dissing the other guys, “Do I look 20 percent smaller to you? I must to McDonald's…” which got her hauled into court for ad mudslinging at age five. She went on to attend Manhattan's Professional Children's School, nabbed the role of Kendall, Erica Kane's stable-boy-mounting daughter on All My Children and at 17, headed west to Sunnydale to slay vampirish villains.

Most Notable Accomplishments: In just two attempts she won the Emmy (that took Susan Lucci 19 shots) for her role in All My Children, is engaged to Scooby-Doo co-star, Freddie Prinze Jr., is a spokesmodel for Maybelline, made People magazine's 50 Most Beautiful People list in 1998 and hit the big screen as teen scream queen in flicks like I Know What You Did Last Summer and Scream 2, as well as a first rate bitch in Cruel Intentions.

Initial Evaluation: Attractive young woman, speaks very quickly, smells of vanilla (her favorite scent), appears fashionable but slightly unkempt (bra strap showing), has an athletic build resultant of Tae Kwon Do training, and several body piercings: five holes in each ear and an occasional navel ring.


Symptom #1
During an interview for Nylon (November, 1999), Sarah visits the SoHo boutique, Tocca, where “she stops at a gray wool coat…'Oh, that's so pretty. I love that one,' she coos, trying it on. Gazing at herself in the mirror, a look of confusion clouds her face. ‘I have this one already.’ She corrects herself: ‘Buffy has this coat.’”

Analysis
During the abovementioned episode, Sarah may have been suffering from a Dissociative Fugue, characterized by confusion about personal identity and possible partial or total assumption of a new identity.

An essential component of the Dissociative Fugue is sudden or unexpected travel of the afflicted individual off his/her beaten path. So while Sarah is from Manhattan, she may have never had the chance to shop at this particular Tocca location, making the shopping trip foreign to her and thus jarring her into the fugue state.

It seems that Sarah has assumed a new identity, Buffy, however, the assumption seems to be partial because, though she does go so far as to refer to herself by a different name, she is attracted to the same gray coat revealing that she maintains consistent taste in apparel throughout both identities.

Symptom #2
On Buffy, Sarah was originally considered for the role of Cordelia. But she bleached her hair blonde and convinced producers that she made a better sunny Californian vampire slayer instead.

Analysis
Though she claims the change in hair color was for an “acting role,” Sarah is clearly disposed to radically changing her physical appearance. She could be afflicted with Body Dysmorphic Disorder (BDD), a Somatoform Disorder characterized by the distressing and impairing preoccupation with an imagined or slight defect in appearance.

BDD patients are often reluctant to divulge their symptoms because of secrecy and shame. Therefore, though Sarah claims she altered her hair to “get the part,” she may be using the role of Buffy to cover her deep dissatisfaction with her own naturally brunette state.

Symptom #3
While attending Knott’s Berry Farm, a “vampire” jumped out to scare Sarah and she responded with a karate chop. She confessed, “The guy grabbed me and I hit him. It was a reaction.” (Venice, October, 1997)

Analysis
Sarah exhibits delusional behavior. She is confusing fantasy with reality in that she can no longer determine the difference between the real, life-threatening vampires on her TV show and the harmless fake vampires at the amusement park. Therefore, she reacts inappropriately by erroneously trying to slay the amusement park's fake vampire just as she would a real vampire on the Sunnydale set.

Symptom #4
In Allure (April, 2001), she talks about how an Australian store closed its doors to the public so she could shop without bother, Maybelline volunteered to reformulate a discontinued eye pencil just for her and a fabric store stayed open an extra half hour so she and her stylist could design a wrap for her to wear to the Golden Globes.

Analysis
Sarah seems preoccupied with getting the royal treatment, symptomatic of Narcissistic Personality Disorder. Her grandiose sense of self-importance is evident in her expectation that people trying to conduct everyday business should go out of their way to meet her needs.

This is combined with her feelings of being “special” and thus unable to do things like the common folk, such as shop with other people present, during actual business hours and purchasing makeup pencils that are, in fact, available for retail sale.