The lives and successes of celebrities, starlets and the great fallen enjoy unflagging popularity, as evidenced by the font size of boulevard magazine titles and the number of hands that reach for them.

"Is it just a coincidence that so many of the beautiful and rich have mental problems that are visible to the naked eye?" asks Borwin Bandelow, author of the book 'Celebrities. On the Difficult Happiness of Being Famous', recently published by Gdańsk Psychological Publishing House.

In the first chapter, the author gives a clear and comprehensible overview of personality disorders to a wide range of readers, not necessarily professionally involved in psychology or psychiatry, explains the terminology used and the perspectives of modern psychiatry, and shows carefully the differences between the variants 'antisocial', 'borderline', 'histrionic', 'narcissistic'. Reading this concise introduction, one still has the impression of interacting with something popular science later on, it gets worse. Here is an example: "Whenever we read about self-destructive elements in a biography, such as drug addiction or suicide attempts, the suspicion of borderline personality arises" - these are the golden thoughts that the Göttingen psychiatrist regales us with. By presenting spicy fragments of celebrity biographies, the author tries to prove the thesis, which he coyly puts forward at the beginning, that the rich and famous suffer from a borderline personality disorder. There is something about it, however, that makes Bandelow's book seem like a somewhat elaborate gossip magazine, underpinned by a psychological analysis of the figures in question. Under the façade of "reliable" sources, the author diagnoses "at a distance", puts himself in the position of a direct observer, a good friend of the stars, a direct witness of their ups and downs, which makes the publication at times at least biased.

Bandelow tries to sound somewhat intriguing when he mentions that " celebrity life stories are often a mixture of sex, drugs and rock and roll. There is an amazing explanation for the interconnectedness of these elements". And probably, in the eyes of many readers, on the promise of unravelling this mystery, the whole intrigue ends. As you continue reading, you can learn about combinations of traits indicative of borderline personality disorder: difficult childhoods, narcissism, addictions, self-harm, anxiety, depression, sexual abuse or the inability to form stable emotional relationships. The author examines celebrities for these traits, reporting with precision on Janis Joplin's drug excesses, Marilyn Monroe's drug addiction or the mysterious circumstances of Kurt Cobain's death. A great deal of space is devoted to an accurate portrayal of the facts of the stars' lives, from their mostly traumatic childhoods through their dramatic adolescence to when the stars reached the heights of fame. However, one is left wanting; surprisingly little space is devoted to analysing the behaviours or drives that drove people's behaviour. This leaves one to remember, after reading the next chapter, that Edith Piaf was the daughter of an Algerian-Italian prostitute and that Elvis Presley ate four balls of ice cream and six biscuits before he died. There is little room for behavioural analysis in such a situation, and when it does appear, it is only in the form of a mention and the mantra-like repetition of the phrase "there is one source of these dysfunctions: borderline personality".

Robbie Williams' fear of loneliness and concomitant inability to form close relationships is explained by the author as the presence of a borderline personality. Also with the sleep medication addict Marilyn Monroe, whose death remains a mystery to this day, Bandelow, donning the mask of a detective in this case, confidently argues that it is a coincidence because "sane people do not understand that people with borderline personality play with death so recklessly".