Fictional portrayals of psychopaths
Fictional portrayals of psychopaths, or sociopaths, are some of the most notorious in film and literature but may only vaguely or partly relate to the concept of psychopathy, which is itself used with varying definitions by mental health professionals, criminologists and others.
There are several stereotypical images of psychopathy in both lay and professional accounts which only partly overlap and can involve contradictory traits: the charming con artist, the deranged serial killer, the successful corporate psychopath, or the chronic low-level offender with juvenile delinquency.
The public concept reflects some combination of fear of the mythical bogeyman, fascination with human evil, and sometimes perhaps envy of people who might appear to go through life unencumbered by the same levels of guilt, anguish or insecurity.
[1] In the 19th century the diagnostic categories of monomania or moral insanity (the word 'moral' then meant either emotional or ethical) made their way into works of literature, covering numerous eccentricities, obsessions or breakdowns—and sometimes acts of apparently senseless criminality, occasionally violent.
Early representations of psychopaths in film were often caricatured as sadistic, unpredictable, sexually depraved, and emotionally unstable (manic) characters with a compulsion to engage in random violence and destruction, usually with a series of bizarre mannerisms such as giggling, laughing, or facial tics.
Homosexuals were also referred to as psychopaths under the broad definition then in use; the American Psychiatric Association in the first Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders in 1952 would list it under 'sociopathic personality disturbance'.
A German film (allegedly based on the real life serial killer Peter Kürten), it was released in America in 1933 and has been seen as indicative of a turning point in American media depictions of psychopaths.
[6] The Ostap Bender character from novels The Twelve Chairs and The Little Golden Calf by Soviet authors Ilf and Petrov is also considered a portrait of a charming psychopath.
[9][10] Gein was found mentally ill and legally insane before trial, deemed to have had schizophrenia (psychosis including delusions and hallucinations) for at least 12 years, though at least one media psychiatrist dubbed him instead a 'sexual psychopath'.
In Ken Kesey's 1962 novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Randle McMurphy, after being admitted to a mental institution, is repeatedly referred to by the authorities, other patients and himself as a possible or definite psychopath.
He reads from his record: "repeated outbreaks of passion that suggest the possible diagnosis of psychopath", and adds that a doctor told him it means "I fight and fuh-pardon me, ladies-means I am he put it overzealous in my sexual relations."
[18] American mystery author Patricia Highsmith often featured psychopathic characters in her books, most notably her Ripliad series about Tom Ripley, a "suave, agreeable and utterly amoral" con artist and serial killer.
However, writer and director Terrence Malick has said he considered Kit's shallow, bitter insensitivity to be a result of suffering and neglect growing up in the Midwest, and 15-year-old Holly, though immature and mis-estimating her audience, to be a quite typical Southern girl wanting to help narrate and come off well but still give the hard facts, and not dwell on herself or on personal tragedies.
[23][24] The increasing media focus of serial killers in the late 20th century, fueled by cases such as John Wayne Gacy (1978), Ted Bundy (1978) and Jeffrey Dahmer (1991), lent an additional momentum to the way psychopathy was both perceived and portrayed in film and literature, sometimes incorporating a hybrid of traditional psychopaths from early film and late-19th century literature with the high-functioning behaviors detected in some serial killers.
[25][26] The psychiatrist and cannibalistic serial killer Hannibal Lecter, most notably portrayed by Anthony Hopkins in the Academy Award-winning 1991 film The Silence of the Lambs, is perhaps the most infamous fictional psychopath of the 20th century.
In 2013 Harris revealed that he originally based the Lecter character on Alfredo Ballí Trevino, a Mexican physician who had killed and dismembered his homosexual lover, in what was called a crime of passion over a financial dispute.
Author Bret Easton Ellis has told interviewers that the book is a satire on shallow consumerist lifestyles, but also that the writing of the violent scenes was based on fictional horror and FBI material on serial killers, along with how he imagined "a psychotic who worked on Wall Street" would describe such incidents.
[42] One Chicago academic has argued in a review of TV trends that the contemporary fantasy of sociopathy/psychopathy is of someone whose emotional disconnection from others in society, rather than being the hindrance that it can represent in real clinical cases, enables them to be an amazingly successful manipulator due to a breakdown in the social contract.
[43] Vriska Serket, antihero of web fiction epic Homestuck, displays numerous traits of psychopathy, especially Machiavellianism, lack of remorse, and fearless-dominant confidence.
