Also, Ms. Walker, would you be at all interested in speaking with me briefly for an article? I write for Crimewatch Canada and not surprisingly, psychopathy is a popular topic. My reporting to date has more of a reliance on Hare than you’d probably think is appropriate which is why a fresh perspective is desirable. I love to be proven wrong. If you are interested email me at erinshaw7@outlook.com. Many thanks.
If I were to assess from what I know of these characters: ASPD, ASPD, and Narc... definitely not psychopath. And wow... that dialog is ridiculous. I imagine you grow weary from such idiotic conversations. Unfortunately the majority of people are content to let cinema dictate their understanding of clinical brain studies. The science itself is infantile given our current understanding of the way the human mind works. It's not helpful when 'professional opinion' is equally uninformed yet still spreading their 'truth' as gospel to the already uneducated.
You mentioned books that had close to accurate characters that went unlabeled. I wonder if an actual psychopath would ever consult with a filmmaker or writer? Why would they bother? Is there an vested interest either way in helping neurotypicals accurately portray psychopathy in fiction? I would think no, but I’m guessing from the outside looking in.
P.s.- I always learn from and deeply enjoy your writings. Thanks for making them available.
Hm, based on my knowledge on the subject, probably the best written fictional A-Lister I’ve seen is Henry Drax from BBC’s The North Water. Yet to encounter a well done high-functioning psychopathic character though. Hannibal Lecter certainly ain’t it.
Jul 10, 2022·edited Jul 11, 2022Liked by Athena Walker
I can kind of understand people thinking of Lecter as a psychopath. If you ignore his crimes, and the reasons behind them (which a disturbing number of people do anyway), and just look at his behaviour in The Silence of the Lambs, he does have a sort of confident, charming surety, and a seeming lack of emotion.
But Chigurh makes no sense to me. If he was a psychopath then how come… everything. The coin flipping, the questionable level of sanity, all of it. He just… doesn’t seem remotely psychopathic.
This correlation with psychopathy and immunity to addiction makes sense. Having experienced addiction and been successfully helped with it I would agree that it would be impossible for anyone incapably of fear could would not need to mask anxiety / intrusive thoughts. An addition is just a self imposed method to dampen down or switch off undesired symptoms generated by (negative) unconscious or (negative) conscious thoughts. It soon becomes a habit which creates a dilemma, stop and the addict suffers both short term physical and mental withdrawal (and the return of anxiety) or carry on and suffer chemical side effects, risk to physical and mental health and increased anxiety / shame and guilt. The only way out is to treat the emotions that the addict is ignoring then to work on the habit. This approach is still considered controversial and in this case, subjective but it worked for me.
Mar 5, 2022·edited Mar 5, 2022Liked by Athena Walker
Because the psychologic description of this evil guys fits not into psychopathy, but mainstream/ neurotypicals/ misinformed scientists/ scientific researchers like Hare/ DSM-5 and ICD 10 will not change their understanding and own logic, it looks like the wall is to big to break down.
It seems like Psychopathy will never get into mainstream without missunderstanding. The majority wants the evil guys to be named as psychopaths.
They addicted to compare it or use it as synonym. Evil and psychopathy is the same for the majority, because psycho-pathy is a word composition seems including all psychologic illnesses and today its so easy to use for it, right?
Psychopathy includes every behavior, all the bad vibes of humanity, this is what mainstream wants.
You are doing bad things? Something is wrong with your mental healt. You must be a psychopath. Mainstream wants it easy like this and is addicted to it. Also right?
So better give a part of psychopathy into antisocial disorder, where both brainstructers can exist neurotypical and also psychopthic brainstructures if they are using antisocial behaviour.
Time should come to give this baby a new name.
Dont know, maybe oxytocin undersupply desease or emotional bonding disability, it is a kind of development disorder given with birth and fullfilled at age of 25 and needs to be named like this. Psychopathy will never describe what it is, I think so.
On this way there would be a possibility to make life easier for psychopathic people. I know psychopaths need other kinds of medicine for their metabolism and hormone balances by sickness like migraine and so on.
Also education of kids needs to be improved to get better understanding for parents, teachers, doctors or coaches and how to handle those kids.
Autistic kids gets chances because of better understanding of their spectrum, ADHD kids also. This both groups are also minority und misunderstood. But science is working on it, to improve their situation.
I am not a fan of prisoning all psychopaths same as for killing like some stupid people suggest.
I think the psychopathic disability can be use- and helpful for the communities and given a fair chance to end hiding.
Would like to see that.
I think Kevin Dutton or Harvey Cleckley maybe would not like this, but to win the fight, its better to loose the first rounds if necessary.
What do you think Athena. Is it naive or would you like psychopathy is named for your brainstructer and if yes, are you naive with this? Please tell me. 😘
Sorry, for bad english. I am not a natural speaker.
I'm curious - what do you think of Lou Bloom from Nightcrawler? To me, he seems to have some psychopathic tendencies, but I would agree that he isn't a psychopath.
Feb 27, 2022·edited Feb 27, 2022Liked by Athena Walker
Every movie character labelled a psychopath or sociopath in cinema is just Hollywood propaganda. Chigurh not only sucks and had an absurd amount of plot armor, he was too OP. The Joker and Hannibal Lecter are disqualified for obvious reasons. Sherlock (any version) is ambiguously autistic or an idiot savant. Patrick Bateman is a lunatic and not psychopathic, but at least he was funny. He's more of an over the top example of narcissistic rage.
I never thought I'd have to think about fifty shades again but the fact that there are people out there who think Christian Grey fits the bill, lol. Don't even get me started on people who unironically think Nate Jacobs from Euphoria is a psychopath.
Edit: Death Note was forgettable, Norman Bates was weird and I'm not watching that Kevin movie.
Good read that !! I enjoy all you write. Athena, do you believe Mr Putin is psychopathic? ( I do not, I believe he has slight 'Asperger's.) Would appreciate knowing some ACTUAL psychopaths that you would consider so. Of course, they would have to be well known, or I wouldn't have a clue who you meant !!! ...but then, if they like to blend in, perhaps fame wouldn't suit them?
Crickey. Your inbox is clearly not a boring place.
Also, Ms. Walker, would you be at all interested in speaking with me briefly for an article? I write for Crimewatch Canada and not surprisingly, psychopathy is a popular topic. My reporting to date has more of a reliance on Hare than you’d probably think is appropriate which is why a fresh perspective is desirable. I love to be proven wrong. If you are interested email me at erinshaw7@outlook.com. Many thanks.
Sorry you are dealing with such uninformed people Athena.
If I were to assess from what I know of these characters: ASPD, ASPD, and Narc... definitely not psychopath. And wow... that dialog is ridiculous. I imagine you grow weary from such idiotic conversations. Unfortunately the majority of people are content to let cinema dictate their understanding of clinical brain studies. The science itself is infantile given our current understanding of the way the human mind works. It's not helpful when 'professional opinion' is equally uninformed yet still spreading their 'truth' as gospel to the already uneducated.
You mentioned books that had close to accurate characters that went unlabeled. I wonder if an actual psychopath would ever consult with a filmmaker or writer? Why would they bother? Is there an vested interest either way in helping neurotypicals accurately portray psychopathy in fiction? I would think no, but I’m guessing from the outside looking in.
P.s.- I always learn from and deeply enjoy your writings. Thanks for making them available.
Hm, based on my knowledge on the subject, probably the best written fictional A-Lister I’ve seen is Henry Drax from BBC’s The North Water. Yet to encounter a well done high-functioning psychopathic character though. Hannibal Lecter certainly ain’t it.
What sort of music do you like, Athena?
I can kind of understand people thinking of Lecter as a psychopath. If you ignore his crimes, and the reasons behind them (which a disturbing number of people do anyway), and just look at his behaviour in The Silence of the Lambs, he does have a sort of confident, charming surety, and a seeming lack of emotion.
But Chigurh makes no sense to me. If he was a psychopath then how come… everything. The coin flipping, the questionable level of sanity, all of it. He just… doesn’t seem remotely psychopathic.
This correlation with psychopathy and immunity to addiction makes sense. Having experienced addiction and been successfully helped with it I would agree that it would be impossible for anyone incapably of fear could would not need to mask anxiety / intrusive thoughts. An addition is just a self imposed method to dampen down or switch off undesired symptoms generated by (negative) unconscious or (negative) conscious thoughts. It soon becomes a habit which creates a dilemma, stop and the addict suffers both short term physical and mental withdrawal (and the return of anxiety) or carry on and suffer chemical side effects, risk to physical and mental health and increased anxiety / shame and guilt. The only way out is to treat the emotions that the addict is ignoring then to work on the habit. This approach is still considered controversial and in this case, subjective but it worked for me.
Because the psychologic description of this evil guys fits not into psychopathy, but mainstream/ neurotypicals/ misinformed scientists/ scientific researchers like Hare/ DSM-5 and ICD 10 will not change their understanding and own logic, it looks like the wall is to big to break down.
It seems like Psychopathy will never get into mainstream without missunderstanding. The majority wants the evil guys to be named as psychopaths.
They addicted to compare it or use it as synonym. Evil and psychopathy is the same for the majority, because psycho-pathy is a word composition seems including all psychologic illnesses and today its so easy to use for it, right?
Psychopathy includes every behavior, all the bad vibes of humanity, this is what mainstream wants.
You are doing bad things? Something is wrong with your mental healt. You must be a psychopath. Mainstream wants it easy like this and is addicted to it. Also right?
So better give a part of psychopathy into antisocial disorder, where both brainstructers can exist neurotypical and also psychopthic brainstructures if they are using antisocial behaviour.
Time should come to give this baby a new name.
Dont know, maybe oxytocin undersupply desease or emotional bonding disability, it is a kind of development disorder given with birth and fullfilled at age of 25 and needs to be named like this. Psychopathy will never describe what it is, I think so.
On this way there would be a possibility to make life easier for psychopathic people. I know psychopaths need other kinds of medicine for their metabolism and hormone balances by sickness like migraine and so on.
Also education of kids needs to be improved to get better understanding for parents, teachers, doctors or coaches and how to handle those kids.
Autistic kids gets chances because of better understanding of their spectrum, ADHD kids also. This both groups are also minority und misunderstood. But science is working on it, to improve their situation.
I am not a fan of prisoning all psychopaths same as for killing like some stupid people suggest.
I think the psychopathic disability can be use- and helpful for the communities and given a fair chance to end hiding.
Would like to see that.
I think Kevin Dutton or Harvey Cleckley maybe would not like this, but to win the fight, its better to loose the first rounds if necessary.
What do you think Athena. Is it naive or would you like psychopathy is named for your brainstructer and if yes, are you naive with this? Please tell me. 😘
Sorry, for bad english. I am not a natural speaker.
Go on!! 😉
I'm curious - what do you think of Lou Bloom from Nightcrawler? To me, he seems to have some psychopathic tendencies, but I would agree that he isn't a psychopath.
I guess I'm just wondering what your thoughts are
Every movie character labelled a psychopath or sociopath in cinema is just Hollywood propaganda. Chigurh not only sucks and had an absurd amount of plot armor, he was too OP. The Joker and Hannibal Lecter are disqualified for obvious reasons. Sherlock (any version) is ambiguously autistic or an idiot savant. Patrick Bateman is a lunatic and not psychopathic, but at least he was funny. He's more of an over the top example of narcissistic rage.
I never thought I'd have to think about fifty shades again but the fact that there are people out there who think Christian Grey fits the bill, lol. Don't even get me started on people who unironically think Nate Jacobs from Euphoria is a psychopath.
Edit: Death Note was forgettable, Norman Bates was weird and I'm not watching that Kevin movie.
Thank you I’ll definitely check if out
Good read that !! I enjoy all you write. Athena, do you believe Mr Putin is psychopathic? ( I do not, I believe he has slight 'Asperger's.) Would appreciate knowing some ACTUAL psychopaths that you would consider so. Of course, they would have to be well known, or I wouldn't have a clue who you meant !!! ...but then, if they like to blend in, perhaps fame wouldn't suit them?
Athena do you have a character that is similar or closer to a psychopath that you can site?
Athena, I’m not sure if I missed it but do you have a character that is close to a psychopath?