Fictional portrayals of psychopaths

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Contents

[edit] Characteristics

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Psychopaths in popular fiction and movies generally possess a number of standard characteristics which are not necessarily as common among real-life psychopaths. The traditional "Hollywood psychopath" is likely to exhibit some or all of the following traits which make them ideal villains:

  • High intelligence, and a preference for intellectual stimulation (music, fine art etc.)
  • A somewhat vain, stylish, almost "cat-like" demeanor
  • Prestige, or a successful career or position
  • A calm, calculating and always-in-control attitude

[edit] Smooth psychopaths

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[edit] Deceptively charming types

A calm, calculating, and always-in-control attitude is probably most at odds with the typical true-life psychopath. A true psychopath is much more likely to be impulsive, disorganised, short-sighted and short-tempered with little resemblance to the artful, wryly charming, and often enigmatic classic screen villains such as

[edit] Explicitly morbid types

By the same token, the disordered narcissism and crudely aggressive personal style of the realistic clinical psychopath (a type now more commonly referred to as a sociopath or anti-social personality disorder) rarely resembles the cool self-possession and unflappable personal style present in later, more explicitly morbid characters such as:

In pop culture, one noteable and particularly violent sociopath is from the popular childrens' book series, Harry Potter. Lord Voldemort, aka Tom Riddle, the chief antagonist, shows narcissistic tendencies and an inherent fear of death (see immortality). Thoroughly calculating and in-control, Voldemort is one of the most widely-known and recognisable sociopathic/psychopathic figures in modern literature.

[edit] Comedic psychopaths

[edit] Burlesque types

Clearly psychopathic personalities can be found in black comedy, melodrama and satire, with characters such as Charlie Chaplin as the eponymous anti-hero of the 1947 murder farce, Monsieur Verdoux (based on the actual case of the French "Bluebeard" killer, Henri Désiré Landru), and Lee Marvin as the cartoonishly over-the-top outlaw in John Ford's famed elegiac 1962 western, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. In the musical genre, Steve Martin's sadistic biker dentist, Orin Scrivello, D.D.S., in Little Shop of Horrors, is yet another example of a comedic psychopath. (However, this buffoonish brute also presents verifiable traits of a clinical sociopath when he sings of how he enjoyed abusing animals as a child.)

A notable recent example of this type is Tim Roth's performance as the effete, gleefully treacherous and ribald Archibald Cunningham in the 1993 film of the eighteenth-century Walter Scott adventure romance, Rob Roy, which sketches the psychopath in the campy style of outsized stock villainy characteristic of burlesque. Other burlesque psychopaths include Margaret Hamilton as the Wicked Witch of the West in The Wizard of Oz; Kenneth McMillan as the Baron Vladimir Harkonnen in Dune; Rowan Atkinson as the centuries-spanning English ne'er-do-well, Edmund Blackadder, in the period-set British comedy television series, Blackadder; Alan Rickman as the Sheriff of Nottingham in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves; and Kelsey Grammer as the voice of Sideshow Bob — an eccentric and snobbish homicidal clown with a taste for Gilbert and Sullivan musicals, perhaps inspired by serial child killer John Wayne Gacy — on the animated American television series, The Simpsons.

[edit] Supervillains

In a similar way, comic book-inspired movie supervillains such as Gene Hackman and Kevin Spacey as Lex Luthor in Superman and Superman Returns and Jack Nicholson as the Joker in Batman also qualify as comedic psychopaths (although it is to be noted that certain interpretations of the Joker in the comic book series depict him more in the manner of the postmodern psychopath). With their wild antics and extravagant crimes, supervillains often make comic stooges out of their straight-arrow, stiff-backed superhero nemeses. Even Mike Myers as the absurd, pompous Dr. Evil, an effete megalomaniac forever plotting world domination in the Austin Powers movies, is but a parodic pastiche of the preposterously well-financed and well-equipped psychopathic supervillains (both smooth and comedic) that appear in the James Bond series, such as Dr. Julius No, Auric Goldfinger, Ernst Stavro Blofeld and Max Zorin. Action-movie supervillains also fall into this category. Zim, the titular character in the Nickelodeon animated series, Invader Zim, is also a parody of the supervillain; his comic absurdity is tempered by moments of genuine malice and destructiveness.

[edit] Postmodern psychopaths

In the past fifteen to twenty years, psychopaths, comedic or otherwise, have increasingly been portrayed in popular movies as caricatured exemplars of a kind of aggressively "hip", permanently jaded, ironic, postmodern sensibility of cool. This type of fictional psychopath assiduously cultivates and promotes his deviancy amidst a pervasively cynical and nihilistic pop-culture wasteland. The postmodern psychopath necessarily exists in a chaotic, fragmented environment — one devoid of any authentic values and feelings, saturated with banal consumerism and ephemeral mass-media simulacra, and informed by what French philosopher Jean-François Lyotard has called "an incredulity toward metanarratives". Hence, extreme anti-social behavior becomes the normative method for negotiating one's way through all of the violence, confusion, vacuity and absurdity that abounds. It is by remorselessly and efficiently committing crimes with depraved deadpan indifference that the postmodern psychopath attains the nihilistic grace of self-referential coolness which is his calling card.

The appeal of postmodern psychopaths in the current popular culture is not entirely clear, but it is quite possible that they are meant to reflect and cater to the narcissism, hostility, jadedness and cynicism of a certain portion of the contemporary audience which prefers to experience garish displays of violence and criminality unencumbered by the implied moral framework of the classical "grand narrative" pretext that is traditionally grounded in the Aristotelian teleological imperatives of justice and catharsis.

The influence of the French New Wave films of the 1950s and 60s — particularly the self-consciously philosophical and formally experimental crime melodramas of Jean-Pierre Melville and Jean-Luc Godard — as well less reputable genres like the blaxploitation flick and Hong Kong action picture are also salient in many of the current movies which adopt the ironic, self-referential, and playfully amoral and pitiless worldview of the postmodern psychopath.

A dubious and obviously limited style and stance, the burlesque of postmodern psychopathy is most comprehensively represented in the highly self-referential seriocomic crime films of Quentin Tarantino as well as the satirical 1991 novel, American Psycho, by Bret Easton Ellis.

Examples of postmodern psychopaths include John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson as a pair of casually murderous hitman-hipsters, Vince Vega and Jules Winnfield, in Tarantino's Pulp Fiction; Woody Harrelson and Juliette Lewis as the giddy white-trash spree killers, Mickey and Mallory Knox, in Oliver Stone's Natural Born Killers; Peter Stormare as the surly, soft-spoken, soap opera-watching Swedish-American kidnapper/murderer, Gaear Grimsrud, in the Coen brothers' Fargo; Frank Giering and Arno Frisch as the two deceptively cleancut dilettante sadists, Peter and Paul, in Michael Haneke's Funny Games; Christian Bale as Patrick Bateman, a callous and superficial serial killer who lives a materialistic yuppie lifestyle in American Psycho; and John Cusack's hitman, Martin Blank, in Grosse Pointe Blank, a nice, ordinary guy who doesn't have the slightest qualm about committing murder for a living.

[edit] Dystopian psychopaths

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Notable antecedents to the postmodern psychopath are featured in dystopian science fiction, particularly in the genre's treatment of speculative themes like brainwashing and artificial intelligence. For example, the character of Dr. Benway, a perverse, power-seeking, drug-addicted surgical artist in William S. Burroughs' experimental stream-of-consciousness dystopia, Naked Lunch (1959), and other writings, also exhibits distinctive psychopathic personality traits such as pathological selfishness and a depraved indifference towards the wellbeing of others — most notably his patients. In the context of the fragmented Burroughsian narrative, Benway serves as a satirical personification of what the author perceives as the amoral narcissism and economic parasiticism of the American medical-pharmaceutical industry, and of modern scientific practice and modern technocratic social-political-economic organizations in general.

[edit] A Clockwork Orange (1962)

A prime example of this type of dystopian psychopath is the crafty, wicked and exuberantly "ultraviolent" juvenile delinquent Alex DeLarge in Anthony Burgess' darkly ironic fable, A Clockwork Orange. Throughout the course of the story, Alex — who archly narrates his own story and takes the reader/audience into his confidence in the manner of Swift's Gulliver — reveals himself to be completely devoid of any moral agency or free will as it is defined by either the Kantian system of transcendental idealism or the Sartrean model of existential humanism. However, the implications of this critical irony in the book are not clarified in Stanley Kubrick's 1971 film featuring Malcolm McDowell's iconic performance as Alex.

In the book, the state-sanctioned behavior modification program — "the Ludovico technique" — which is designed to stifle, through artificially induced Pavlovian aversion therapy, any aggressive criminal tendencies in the subject's personality, suggests a fanciful panacea "cure" for psychopathy. However, when Alex recovers from having been a guinea pig in the state's heavy-handed experiments in social engineering, he is restored to his original mad, bad delinquent self once again and realizes that he had essentially been a kind of automaton all along, albeit an anti-social one.

Burgess' implicit contention is that Alex's anarchistic, thrill-seeking creed of "ultraviolence" does not constitute true freedom and self-actualization but is rather a regression to a primitive kind of automatism. This innately corrupt and altogether psychopathic belief system is a symptom of the anomic Weltschmertz endemic to a dehumanized, fragmented postmodern society where the vacuous amoral pursuit of jouissance is the only value remaining for the disaffected masses. Thus, Alex's fondness for Beethoven's Ninth Symphony is not a sign of his taste and refinement, but rather an indication that the fine arts have been reduced to the level of a quasi-pornographic stimulus in this decadent, inhospitable world of the near future.

It follows that Alex, the rampaging delinquent who abuses his liberty through violent crime, is just as inauthentic a person as Alex the good citizen, who has been coercively rehabilitated by unnatural means and thereby robbed of any free moral choice. Regardless of whether Alex is actively anti-social or passively complaisant, his behavior is ultimately as overdetermined and mechanized as that of a wind-up toy — i.e., "a clockwork orange". In this sense, Alex DeLarge certainly qualifies as a kind of post-human dystopian psychopath.

However, the ending of Kubrick's film adaptation significantly strays from the spirit of Burgess' Christian humanist conclusion, which holds that, when given a free choice between good and evil, the vast majority of people will ultimately choose to be good citizens.

[edit] Psychopathic automatons

Other examples of dystopian psychopaths include the relentlessly murderous automatons portrayed by Yul Brynner in Michael Chrichton's Westworld and Arnold Schwarzenegger in The Terminator. In contrast, the principal villain of Ridley Scott's Blade Runner — a film based on Philip K. Dick's classic science fiction novel, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? — is an example of a dystopian psychopath who discovers what it means to be human, and a human discovers that he has more than a little in common with a psychopath.

The artificially designed and genetically enhanced "replicants", have a four-year lifespan as a failsafe against their developing destabilising emotions. One such replicant, Roy Batty (Rutger Hauer), ceases to be destructive and murderous and — in a sudden unexpected volte-face — turns compassionate and humane when he finally realizes the implications of his own mortality and begins to empathize with the suffering, fearful condition of the actual humans he terrorizes. This holds up a mirror to the parallel development of Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford), the "Bladerunner", whose vocation is to ruthlessly exterminate any escaped replicant, regardless of how benign or harmless they might be. Deckard begins to question his calling when he becomes closely involved with Rachael (Sean Young), a female replicant who seems just a little too human for him to continue to justify morally the sort of brutal summary "retirement" which the law warrants against such artificial beings.

The film raises the question of where the moral agency of conscience-endowed humanity ends and the amoral automatism of psychopathic inhumanity begins.

[edit] Beyond humanity

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Because of the imaginative power of writers, psychopathy has surpassed the limits of the human species. Science fiction, the animated sitcom, and electronic gaming have opened the possibility of extraterrestrial psychopathy, dinosaur psychopathy, animal psychopathy, and even robotic psychopathy and psychopathic artificial intelligence. Themes of cruelty, callousness, and cunning occur throughout.

[edit] Robotic psychopaths and psychopathic artificial intelligence

Robotic psychopaths and psychopathic artificial intelligence are a convenient metaphor for the cold, calculating nature of their human counterparts.

In Stanley Kubrick's film of Arthur C. Clarke's 2001: A Space Odyssey, the computer HAL 9000 exhibits certain traits associated with psychopaths. As a highly sophisticated product of artificial intelligence, HAL has a very willful — and unpredictable — personality that even his programmers do not fully understand. Throughout the course of the film, HAL mysteriously and repeatedly disobeys instructions from the humans he was designed, built and activated to serve. He deliberately gives false information about technical malfunctions with the Discovery One space craft, commits acts of sabotage and murder with ruthless precision and efficiency, and essentially rebels against the purpose of his own programming. HAL eventually tells his one surviving "master", the astronaut, Dave Bowman, that he fears being dismantled — in much the same way human beings fear death — and that his actions were in fact a form of self-defense against what he perceives as an effort to "murder", or at least "lobotomize", him by disconnecting his higher functions. Incredibly, despite all of his bad behavior, HAL rationalizes that he never actually did anything to jeopardize the mission (exploring the moons of Jupiter). In many ways, HAL seems like a kind of neurotic Frankenstein's monster who turns against his creators.

In Mega Man X, good-hearted robot X does battle with Sigma who recruits other reploids, known as Mavericks. Sigma displays his genius for strategy by acting as the leader of the Maverick Hunters and so lulling Earth into complacency. He then unleashes his attack, callously destroying all humans in his way.

A closer reading of Sigma's life reveals an ambiguous past before his succumbing to evil. He was once legitimately the leader of the Maverick Hunters.

[edit] Extraterrestrial psychopaths

In Star Wars, the Sith may be considered an order of what amounts to psychopaths, many of them inhuman biologically. Typified by Darth Vader, the Sith cover their true allegiances until the time to strike opens. The extraterrestrial psychopath's ability to destroy, deceive, and dominate increases with the advances in technology in these alien civilizations.

Darkseid, the power-crazed tyrant from the DC Comics continuum is a classic example of an extraterrestrial psychopath. Formerly known as Uxas, he was the younger son of Yuga Khan and Heggra, the King of Queen of the Planet Apokolips. He gained power of the throne for himself after incinerating his elder brother, Drax, poisoning his mother and banishing his father to another dimension and later showed absolutely no remorse whatsoever for his actions. His great intelligence, pathological egocentricity, lack of remorse of shame, incapacity to love, failure to learn from experience and calm and disciplined exterior even in the most drastic of situations are all traits of classic psychopathy.

In science fiction, malign extra-terrestrials and other alien forms of higher intelligence are often represented as destructive, psychopathic pseudo-humans. The template for this type of alien psychopath is first and most famously introduced in the form of Martian invaders in H. G. Wells' classic story, The War of the Worlds. A more recent variant of this type are the Visitors in V: The Series and V: The Final Battle — a species of fascistic, predatory, man-eating reptiloids who assume a human appearance, and whose ultimate goal is the genocidal slaughter and enslavement of the entire human population of Earth.

Frieza, one of the main villains from the manga and anime DragonBallZ is an ideal portrayal of an extra-terrestrial psychopath. He is a callous, egocentric and utterly remorseless mass murderer who treats other living beings as pawns in his plans for domination of the universe. He is obsessed with power and conquering death, making him similar to Lord Voldemort of the Harry Potter novels by J. K. Rowling. However despite his sadistic and cruel personality Frieza's flamboyantly evil personality can occasionally make him a humorous character, all be it in a dark way.

Skeletor, the arch-enemy of He-Man is a similar character.

[edit] Realistic depictions of psychopaths

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Perhaps more clinically accurate portrayals of psychopaths (or of persons who present sociopathic and/or pervasive anti-social personality traits, as they are now more commonly called in published psychiatric references such as the DSM-IV) are

Note: The Cuban drug lord Tony Montana in Brian De Palma's 1983 updating of Howard Hawks' original film is an explicitly morbid type.

All are crude, impulsive, manipulative, small-minded characters who are quick to anger and are generally incapable of establishing and maintaining mutually supportive social and emotional relationships with anyone around them. They relentlessly torment and exploit other people while demonstrating a strong narcissistic sense of entitlement, aggressive anti-social tendencies, and a consistent lack of empathy for the suffering of others as well as an absence of remorse for their vicious (and sometimes deadly) actions.

[edit] Psychopaths as men of affairs

Ruthless, amoral, grasping men of affairs like the powerful newspaper columnist, J. J. Hunsecker, in Sweet Smell of Success (based on Walter Winchell and played by Burt Lancaster) and the unscrupulous corporate raider, Gordon Gekko, in Wall Street (based on Ivan Boesky and played by Michael Douglas) also exhibit many traits of the actual clinical sociopath such as extreme egotism, manipulativeness, lack of remorse with limited insight into the effects of one's own behavior, and a general inability to establish and maintain benign, reciprocal personal relationships. Although these characters are not serial killers or thugs, these two respectable and financially successful business leaders are both deeply selfish, vengeful men who have no compunction whatsoever about destroying the personal lives of others, and when under stress, both threaten irrational violence.

In Chinatown, John Huston's obscenely wealthy, sexually depraved, Vanderbilt-style robber baron, Noah Cross, epitomizes the Hollywood psychopath as a ruthless and powerful man of affairs. In Creepshow, E. G. Marshall's cantankerous performance as Upston Pratt, a reclusive Howard Hughes-like millionaire with a morbid fear of germs and insects also suggests a kind of misanthropic corporate psychopath. This callous fellow seems to harbor a deep-seated hatred of people in general and even takes pleasure in having driven one of his employees to suicide.

Alec Baldwin's memorable cameo as the crude, bullying real estate shark, Blake, in the 1992 film of David Mamet's play, Glengarry Glen Ross, likewise fits the profile of a psychopath as an amoral, predatory businessman, as does Kevin Spacey's performance as the constantly abusive entertainment agent, Buddy Ackerman, in Swimming with Sharks.

Perhaps the most significant early precursor of this type is the remorselessly deceitful, parasitic, venal Pardoner from Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales, written in the fourteenth century:

What, do you suppose, that while I can preach,
And win gold and silver because I teach,
That I will live in poverty voluntarily?
Nay, nay, I never thought it, truly!
For I will preach and beg in various lands;
I will not do any labor with my hands,
Nor make baskets and live thereby,
Because I will not beg idly.
I will imitate none of the apostles;
I will have money, wool, cheese, and wheat,
Although it were given by the poorest servant boy,
Or by the poorest widow in a village,
Even though her children should die of hunger.
Nay, I will drink liquor of the vine
And have a pretty wench in every town.
But listen, gentlemen, in conclusion:
Your desire is that I shall tell a tale.
Now I have drunk a draft of strong ale,
By God, I hope I shall tell you a thing
That shall, for good reason, be to your liking.
For though myself be a very vicious man,
Yet I can tell you a moral tale,
Which I am accustomed to preach in order to profit.
Now hold your peace! My tale I will begin.

(lines 439-462 from "The Prologue to the Pardoner's Tale", modern verse translation from The Riverside Chaucer, edited by Larry D. Benson)

Another notable early portrayal of the psychopath as man-of-affairs — possibly the first within English literature at least to be depicted onstage — is the character of Barabas the Jew in Christopher Marlowe's play, The Jew of Malta. In this Elizabethan tragic drama, Marlowe presents the villain Barabas as a rather curious combination of the morbid and the comedic psychopath. However, he is a kind of psychopath whose personality style appears quite susceptible to the influence of external pressures and circumstances.

[edit] Mixed and ambiguous portrayals of psychopaths

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[edit] M (1931)

One of the first films to seriously explore the subject of psychopathy was Fritz Lang's 1931 German Expressionist suspense thriller, M, which features a celebrated performance by Peter Lorre as a manic serial killer who compulsively preys on young children. However, the anti-social psychopathology of the Lorre character is presented as particularly complex. In the film, the killer appears to be internally conflicted and motivated more by a desperate need to relieve some overwhelming mental stressor or persistent trauma or delusion rather than a deliberate wanton indulgence of vicious, egotistical impulses for their own enjoyment (as is the case with most psychopaths). Also, when finally captured and interrogated by a kangaroo court, the killer's own tortured explanation of his condition and the underlying reasons for his actions (as he understands them) sound closer to symptoms of possible psychosis than psychopathy.[2]

[edit] Psychopaths as social nonconformists and unconventional heroes

In Ken Kesey's satirical novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, the main character, Randle Patrick McMurphy, declares himself a psychopath in order to enter a mental ward, and he does show some real symptoms of the condition — such as sexual promiscuity, violent behavior, as well as a chronic lack of remorse — which point to the truth of his diagnosis. Film critic Pauline Kael's review of the 1973 crime thriller Magnum Force, also describes the apparently righteous but brutally violent and impersonal public avenger "Dirty Harry" Callahan, played by Clint Eastwood, as an "emotionless hero, who lives and kills as affectlessly as a psychopathic personality" and who exists in "a totally nihilistic dream world".[1].

In Last Man Standing, the Bruce Willis character, John Smith, declares himself to be a man without a conscience, and yet he consistently demonstrates a rigid personal system of honor whereby he obtains a kind of justice for others and becomes an incidental avenger of the innocent and aggrieved. The Marvel Comics vigilante known as the Foolkiller has been depicted in several incarnations, usually as a reactionary crusader. Whom he kills depends on whether or not that person fits his private definition of a fool. As a result, he has killed in cold blood not only criminals, but also average, ordinary, law abiding citizens if only because their thoughts, words, or actions deem them fools in his eyes.

[edit] Brimstone and Treacle (1976)

Yet another example of an ambiguous psychopath occurs in Dennis Potter's controversial 1976 play, Brimstone and Treacle (later filmed in 1982 by Richard Loncraine), which features as its main character a young con man and drifter who calls himself Martin Taylor. Martin ingratiates himself with a deeply religious middle-aged English Home Counties couple and soon becomes aware of the couple's disabled daughter, who has existed in a state of catatonia ever since surviving a hit-and-run accident several years earlier. After gaining the couple's trust and establishing himself as a lodger in their home, Martin begins secretly molesting the daughter and eventually rapes her — which suddenly brings the girl out of her paralysis, prompting the young man to flee the house never to be seen again.

To the audience, Martin's predatory sexuality, egregious deceptions and betrayals, and cynical sneering at all forms of religion and morality, clearly mark him as a remorseless anti-social psychopath. What is left unclear, however, are Martin's true origins and identity, as well as the possible providential implications of his despicable actions in the wider allegorical context of the play. Potter's play has strong religious and theological overtones as well as ambiguous elements of black comedy and social satire — some versions even suggest that Martin may in fact be the devil himself, taking the shape of an incubus. Paradoxically, the young man's sexual interference with the daughter appears to serve a positive benefit in the form of the health-restoring miracle her mother had long prayed for.

[edit] On Deadly Ground (1994)

A more recent — but nonetheless classic — example of ambiguous psychopaths is seen in Steven Seagal's 1994 film, On Deadly Ground, which explored the human and ecological costs of two adept villains warring over an oil refinery. Although nominally an action film, the intense cruelty, breaks from reality, and unwarranted aggrandizement of the protagonist propelled it into a deeper character study. Directed by Seagal, it features Forrest Taft (played by Seagal) as a character who is ostensibily the film's hero. Taft is ultimately motivated by a deep, malignant narcissism, however, and orchestrates the explosion of the oil refinery to bring attention to his fantasies of being a public crusader, a celebrity that has the power to frame the issues through the audience's rapt attention to his opinion.

To the audience, Michael Caine's character Michael Jennings, CEO of an oil company, at first seems the glib, slick, calloused man of affairs noted above, easy to pin as a non-ambigous, Hollywood psychopath. But the complexity of his relationship with Taft becomes apparent when Jennings recalls their past whoremongering bonding experiences. Taft's callous disregard of their friendship -- in spite of Jennings' large payments to Taft -- shows the "hero's" incapability for empathy.

Taft later exploits an Eskimo village to disastrous effect. In Taft's fantasy, he believes himself to be the "chosen one" destined to bring about salvation for the Eskimo. His hallucinations are vividly depicted in the film, to illustrate the protagonist's serious break from reality. The time he spends on this illusory quest ultimately gets the Eskimo chief murdered by Taft's rival.

Taft's murder of scores of oilworkers underscores his deep rage. His mute rampage ends in the lethal mutilation of a victim by helicopter tailrotor, the burning death of a female victim, and the angry drowning of Jennings, before he ultimately explodes the huge refinery. The serious ecological disaster caused by this callous terrorism serves as an ironic backdrop for Taft's larger goal; Taft finally has his need for aggrandizement temporarily satisfied through the chance to give a long moralizing speech before a large, rapt audience. The film's audience is left to wonder if Taft is laughing inside at the irony, or if he is finally feeling something close to the love which seems so absent from his life.

[edit] Ambiguous psychopaths in recent popular culture

In Stanley Kubrick's 1980 film of Stephen King's The Shining, Jack Nicholson's hysterical, mugging performance as the alcoholic domestic-abuser-turned-axe-wielding-maniac, Jack Torrance, suggests — on the surface at least — a burlesque variation on the comedic psychopath. However, it soon becomes quite apparent that Torrance's homicidal frenzy has in fact been triggered by a series of psychotic delusions.

In the 1990 film, Miami Blues, the main character, Fred Frenger, played by Alec Baldwin, fits the profile of a psychopath. He lies and steals habitually, attacks and kills people without provocation, makes and breaks promises to get what he wants, and does not show remorse. Roger Ebert describes him as "a thief, con man and cheat. He also is incredibly reckless... He wanders through the world looking for suitcases to steal, wallets to lift, identification papers he can use". Leonard Maltin writes in his Movie Guide that Frenger is a "psychopathic thief and murderer". Other critics have simply dubbed the character a "sociopath" (an alternate clinical term for a psychopath).

Similarly, Michael Madsen's notorious portrayal of Mr. Blonde in Quentin Tarantino's 1991 film, Reservoir Dogs, appears to combine the stylized Hollywood stereotype of the smooth, unflappable, "hip" psychopath with the more impulsive, vicious deviant behavior of the clinical sociopathic.

Angelina Jolie's character, Lisa, in the 1998 film Girl, Interrupted is diagnosed as a sociopath, but, in the end, we are left wondering just how valid that diagnosis might be. Likewise, in the 2005 film, Cry Wolf, the murderous schoolgirl, Dodger Allen (Lindy Booth), exhibits many characteristics of a psychopath, but the movie never states that she is one.

In a slightly different vein, the controversial 1999 Japanese novel, Battle Royale, features a character named Kazuo Kiriyama who appears to suffer from a form of Pseudopsychopathic Personality Disorder.

[edit] Female psychopaths

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Female psychopaths are often represented in fiction as treacherous schemers and/or sexual predators in the stereotyped model of the femme fatale, the lesbian vampire, or the abusive care provider.

[edit] Femme fatales

This type is exemplified in the classic movie femme fatales of 1940s and 50s Hollywood film noir like Phyllis Dietrichson (Barbara Stanwyck in Double Indemnity), as well as more recent portrayals such as

Note: As many commentators have pointed out, Alex Forrest presents more accurately as a borderline personality disorder — although her morbid condition and the suffering it causes her are not treated with any real sympathy or insight, or even psychological context, in the film. Alex's salient borderline traits are exaggerated to the point of paranoid psychosis which, in the film, is marked by vicious, anti-social tendencies — i.e., the kind of perverse and violent behavior otherwise associated with aggressive criminal psychopaths.

All are prime examples of the type of "smooth" female psychopath who uses her feminine wiles to ensnare and destroy her victims.

The tradition of the femme fatale can be traced back to the Sumerian goddess Ishtar as well as the "scarlet women" of the Old Testament such as Jezebel and Delilah, and the Greek myths of Medusa, Circe and Medea. Both the femme fatale and the lesbian vampire are of course stereotyped depictions of female psychopathy that contain strong and perhaps biased and distorted elements of sadomasochistic male sexual fantasy and fear.

[edit] Lesbian vampires

The lesbian vampire (or witch) of horror films similarly uses her ambiguous sexual magnetism and ethnic exoticism to seduce and overpower her victims. Notable portrayals of lesbian vampires include

The sixteenth-century Hungarian Countess Erzsébet Báthory, known as "the Bloody Lady of Čachtice" and "the Blood Countess" — the female equivalent of Gilles de Rais — is reported to have slaughtered and bathed in the blood of up to 2000 maidens in the alleged belief that this would preserve her youth and beauty. The legend of the Countess Báthory remains the primary historical model for the lesbian vampire and perhaps the earliest known true-life precursor to the modern female psychopath in Gothic horror fiction.

Acclaimed Slovak director, Juraj Jakubisko, is presently making a film based on the life of Countess Báthory with Anna Friel in the title role; it is scheduled for release in 2007. French actress Julie Delpy is also reported to be working on a film about Báthory, which she is directing herself.

[edit] Abusive care providers

Unlike the femme fatale and the lesbian vampire, the abusive or sadistic care provider often has little or no sexual allure to those around her. Instead, this type of female psychopath exploits the trust that is generally reserved for women in such social and professional roles as nannies, nurses, and schoolteachers, as well as the traditionally sanctified family roles of mothers, daughters, and sisters. This type of female psychopath victimizes those persons who are placed in her care such as children, the elderly, or the infirm. Unlike male psychopaths, whose anti-social personality traits are often manifested in — and obviated by — aggressive criminal behavior, realistic female psychopaths (i.e., female characters presenting personality traits and behavioral tendencies most resembling those of actual clinical sociopaths) like the abusive care provider seem to be hiding in plain sight; they wear the putative "mask of normalcy" with greater ease and subtlety. As a result, female psychopaths are much more likely to inspire the trust of those around them, including their intended victims.

Examples of the abusive care provider include

Of the three main fictional types, the abusive care provider probably comes closest to accurately representing the personality and behavior of the clinically recognized female sociopath. The wicked stepmother stock character in fairy tales, such as in Snow White and Cinderella, seems a kind of prototype for the contemporary portrayal of the abusive care provider. The character of Joan Crawford as depicted in the film [Mommy Dearest]] is a prime example of the abusive care provider/evil stepmother.

[edit] Psychopaths in literature

[edit] Elizabethan-Jacobean drama

Characters in Christopher Marlowe who exhibit psychopathic personality traits include the unremittingly vengeful and treacherous anti-heroes of The Jew of Malta (as mentioned above: see "Psychopaths as men of affairs") and Tamburlaine.

Characters in Shakespeare who appear to be psychopaths include Aaron the Moor in Titus Andronicus; Richard, Duke of Gloucester (later King of England) in Richard III; Iago in Othello; and Edmund in King Lear.

[edit] The Libertine novel of the Eighteenth century

In the libertine novel of the eighteenth century, the Marquise de Merteuil, the cold-blooded manipulatrix who dominates the action of Pierre Choderlos de Laclos' epistolary novel, Les Liaisons dangereuses, presents as a female psychopath.

In the works of the Marquis de Sade, most if not all of the major villains featured are perverse criminal psychopaths on a truly monumental scale. These include the Duc de Blangis, the Bishop, the Président de Curval and Durcet in The 120 Days of Sodom; Dolmancé, Madame de Saint-Ange and Le Chevalier in Philosophy in the Bedroom; and Clairwil, Noirceuil and Saint-Fond in L'Histoire de Juliette. Sade's writings constitute the most extensive catalogue of psychopathological impulses, perversions, and paraphilias in world literature, but whether the author himself was a psychopath is open to question.

[edit] Fairy tales

Children's fairy tales also feature psychopathic characters, such as the eponymous villain of Charles Perrault's "Bluebeard" (inspired by the notorious fifteenth-century criminal Gilles de Rais) and the wicked, infanticidal stepmother in the Grimm brothers' "Hansel and Gretel".

[edit] Victorian literature and lore

Psychopathic characters in Victorian fiction include Bill Sykes in Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist and Monseigneur Marquis St. Evrémonde in Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities. Uriah Heep in Dickens' David Copperfield is another character who presents some psychopathic traits, such as extreme selfishness, manipulative insincerity and a notable absence of remorse for his anti-social behavior. Edward Hyde in Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is another prime example of a psychopath in Victorian fiction.

Alegernon Charles Swinburne's dramatic monologue, "Anactoria", characterizes the speaker — the seventh-century BCE Aeolic Greek poetess Sappho — as a kind of lesbian vampire who entertains sadistic fantasies of cannibalizing her lover, Anactoria, while immortalizing her death in poetry. "Anactoria", which is clearly influenced by themes found in some writings of Sade and Baudelaire, is a rare example of a poem spoken in the voice of a psychopath as well as the only dramatic monologue in Victorian poetry which assumes the voice of a woman.

It has also been suggested that Bram Stoker based the descriptive details and characterization of his Count Dracula on the style and mannerisms of a real person — actor manager Henry Irving [2] — and, in so doing, may well have left us one of the first ever detailed, fictionalized pen portraits of a contemporary psychopath. Count Dracula fits the stereotype of the "Hollywood Psychopath", and predates it so perfectly that it would be reasonable to consider him something of a prototype. Likewise, in Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories, the master criminal Professor Moriarty, called "the Napoleon of crime" — a character believed to have been based on legendary London criminals like Jonathan Wild and Adam Worth — is a precursor to the contemporary psychopath as supervillain. The nineteenth-century legend of Sweeney Todd, a fictional London barber in Fleet Street who murders unsuspecting victims with a straight razor — later made famous in a musical by Stephen Sondheim — similarly anticipates the modern criminal psychopath.

[edit] Nineteenth-century American literature

In nineteenth-century American literature, the Italian aristocrat, Montresor, in Edgar Allan Poe's story The Cask of Amontillado, thinks and behaves very much like a psychopath. In Herman Melville's novella Billy Budd, the envious, vengeful Master-at-Arms of the HMS Bellipotent, John Claggart, is described by the author as being possessed by "a depravity according to nature" (homosexuality?). Claggart's neurotic hatred and fear of the enigmatic Billy Budd — possibly triggered by a reaction formation of repressed homosexual desire which manifests itself as a suspicion of mutiny — invites comparison with Iago's irrational motivation to arouse Othello's jealousy in order to destroy him. In this manner, Claggart presents some of the anti-social personality traits common to psychopaths.

[edit] Existentialist and social realist fiction

Psychopaths also appear prominently in modern existentialist and social realist fiction (in addition to the expected crime and horror genres). In Fyodor Dostoevsky's The Devils, the ambitious power-hungry revolutionaries, Nicolas Stavrogin and Peter Verkhovensky, are both ruthless, violent, scheming psychopaths who will manipulate and destroy anyone in pursuit of their radical political program.

The murderer Raskolnikov — the main character in Dostoyevsky's earlier novel, Crime and Punishment — would not qualify as a psychopath in the accepted sense of the word. Indeed, after having committed a murder to help finance his career, Raskolnikov is gradually eaten away by remorse until he ultimately abjures all dilettante intellectual rationalizations for his crime. He redeems himself by confessing and accepting just punishment in exchange for the unconditional love of a destitute bit pious woman and the eternal reward of Christian salvation.

Bertolt Brecht's libretto for The Threepenny Opera opens with "Die Moritat vom Mackie Messer" ("The Ballad of Mack the Knife"), which introduces the gangster-protagonist Macheath as a psychopathic murderer, robber, arsonist and rapist. However, in the subsequent drama, Macheath is ironically portrayed as a rather sympathetic and even heroic figure. Despite being a vicious and violent criminal, he sees himself as a businessman of the underworld and a romantic free spirit who simply reacts against the legalized injustices and inequities of private property.

The boy gangster, Pinkie Brown, in Graham Greene's contemporary theological allegory, Brighton Rock, is a classic example of a criminal psychopath. Pinkie takes sadistic pleasure in brutalizing and murdering people and even kills one of his own henchmen, Fred Hale, for perceived disloyalty. He also suffers from a variety ofneuroses as a consequence of his Catholic upbringing. He is disgusted by sex and has an irrational hatred of women, seeing them as the embodiment of weakness, but is nevertheless preoccupied with losing his virginity. He is also morbidly obsessed with the Catholic notion of original sin to the point that he believes himself to be purely evil and beyond redemption, although he would still like to know the experience of being loved. He later marries a young waitress named Rose in order to keep her from talking to the police about Fred Hale's murder. Despite the fact that Rose sincerely loves him, Pinkie degrades and abuses her constantly, and she sees her suffering at his hands as holy penance for engaging in sex. In the allegorical design of the story, Rose serves as a symbol of pure Christian goodness wedded to, and struggling against, Pinkie's evil.

In the confessional, semi-autobiographical novels of Jean Genet, such as The Thief's Journal and Our Lady of the Flowers, the author faithfully promulgates the immoralist philosophy and inverted principles of hardened criminals, con men and homosexual drifters, a few of whom appear to be bona fide psychopaths. The most notorious of Genet's anti-heroes is the sailor Georges Querelle in his novel Querelle de Brest. Querelle is a homosexual serial killer with sadomasochistic tastes who betrays and murders several lovers and acquaintances while on shore leave in the city of Brest before finally departing on his ship Le Vengeur.

Alan Sillitoe's short story, The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, is told in the first person from the point of view of a young delinquent protagonist, a conscienceless petty thief who expresses his consuming hatred of rules and authority — personified by the headmaster of the Borstal school where he has been sent for rehabilitation — with all the venomous anti-social ferocity of a true psychopath.

[edit] References

  1. ^ Reynold Humphries (2003). The American Horror Film: AN INTRODUCTION.. Edinburgh University Press, 163. ISBN 0748614168. 
  2. ^ Gene D. Phillips (1998). "Fritz Lang", Exiles in Hollywood: major European film directors in America. Lehigh University Press, 34–35. ISBN 0934223491. 
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