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.
It's a good thing really. Without there being people spelling out the misconceptions about psychopathy, they would remain in people's minds, and not discussed as topics.
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.
Yes, I agree. It's understandable to a degree, as people are going to consume more entertainment than they are scientific studies. I simply wish that there a was a default mentality of it being fiction, and don't allow it to shape their worldview.
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.
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.
I think he is one of the most ridiculous characters that has ever been on film. It is always surprising to me when people think that this character is anything other than an annoying creation without any relation to real life.
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.
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 wrote about him on Quora when someone asked me to watch the film and give my opinion. This is what I said:
If you liked this movie…… stop reading. This is not going to make you happy.
Dreadful
Boring
Illogical
Long
Irritating
Mind numbing
Baffling (the appeal, really I do not get it)
It’s supposed to be some essay on society. Maybe said essay would have applied back in the eighties. Some guy riding around and filming awful things that bother everyone else for profit? Shocking… back then.
People do this now for “likes” on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, you name it. People run towards disaster with their cell phones out and ready. You’re telling me that him doing it for cash is weird? People say the main character is a psychopath. No, not even close. Creepy doesn’t equal psychopath. He was written in a nonsensical way. He’s so low functioning that he’s a petty thief that idiotically tries to gain employment with the guy who knowingly buys his stolen metal. No one would do this with three working brain cells.
Okay, so he’s low functioning right? Psychopath or not? Nope, because then he’s smart enough to embark on his new career and be driving a car conservatively priced at $44,000.00 in a rapid period of time. Wow, not so low functioning all of a sudden? Did he suddenly become Charlie from, Flowers for Algernon?
He has low self esteem, that was made pretty obvious when he had to blackmail Nina into sexual acts. He had rage issues, obvious when he broke a mirror for no reason. He was constantly needing to take deep breaths to calm himself down. Apparently he’s some raging beast champing at the bit. He was distracting, irritating, and overall just not interesting.
As the film unfolded his self obsession became more and more nauseating. He watched his own videos, not because he was attracted to the gore, but because it was his work. There were several things that spoke to narcissistic tendencies. That I picked up on easily. He was only happy when people recognized him and praised him. All he cared about was people looking at him like he was amazing. He lived for it. Everything was about him. His business, how he appeared, how he was perceived, what people thought of him. The ride on the narcissistic roller coaster got old.
Three of us sat and watched that mistake of a film. None of us liked it. We all felt that it was a complete waste of time. I will not be rewatching it again. Ever.
Thanks for your response. Lou Bloom is actually one of the few characters I've seen in a film that have actually disturbed me. He's so overly manipulative and arrogant in his interactions with others. He's one-dimensional too, which doesn't make him compelling. Malignant narcissist would seem much more accurate, although he's practically more of a caricature. The character is just very sleazy and slimey, and is depicted without any sympathetic traits or actions. I mean, for Pete's sake, even the Tooth Fairy from the film Red Dragon had some backstory about abuse that could explain some of his motivations. Definitely not a psychopath, but at least he was multidimensional.
I can usually feel some empathy for most characters, and even a couple of real-life people who have committed horrible acts, but Bloom was definitely not one.
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.
Hey Athena, a post on Ray would be great, I'm a big fan of the show. You could take examples from the show and describe how well they reflect psychopathy. Also, I'm interested if you think his character is consistent with psychopathy over all 3 seasons, there is an episode where he seems upset describing his childhood to his girlfriend and I thought this was the only inconsistency, then again it could have been part of his 'mask' for that specific situation. I also wonder if a psychopathic lead in a series of multiple seasons has the longevity to entertain an emotional audience that are interested in seeing emotional highs and lows.
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.
No, no it is not.
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.
Perhaps. My email is TheRealAthenaWalker@gmail.com. You can contact me there.
Sorry you are dealing with such uninformed people Athena.
It's a good thing really. Without there being people spelling out the misconceptions about psychopathy, they would remain in people's minds, and not discussed as topics.
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.
Yes, I agree. It's understandable to a degree, as people are going to consume more entertainment than they are scientific studies. I simply wish that there a was a default mentality of it being fiction, and don't allow it to shape their worldview.
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.
Perhaps in the future that will happen. I think that a lot will need to change in regards to how psychopathy is viewed before that will happen though.
Fair enough and based on what you've detailed, I would agree.
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.
I have never seen that show
It’s really good, if you check it out at some point I’d be curious about your thoughts
What sort of music do you like, Athena?
I answered that here:
https://athenawalker.substack.com/p/the-hills-are-alive-with-thats-right
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.
I think he is one of the most ridiculous characters that has ever been on film. It is always surprising to me when people think that this character is anything other than an annoying creation without any relation to real life.
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.
It's awesome that it did
I have tried a handful of different approaches over the last 3 decades. Most based upon Freudian style psychotherapy to no avail.
That's unfortunate
It is what it is, the point I'm trying make is I don't think that regression therapy works. It's outdated and new methods need to be explored.
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!! 😉
Psychopathy as a term is irredeemable in my opinion. However, it isn't a disability, it is a difference.
Yes ok, I expected your reaction.
No disability, since there are no measurable restrictions.
I agree with that to a certain extent. Autistics for example are more restricted and conspicuous due to hypersensitivity.
Both are on a spectrum.
On a scale of 1-30, everyone is somewhere psychopathic. 1 is almost not psychopathic, 30 is very psychopathic.
You tend more to 30, me more to 1 I guess.
Only the scalability remains difficult because of the many individual factors based on emotion.
I wish everyone interested good luck even if I think the term psychopathy is too badly damaged.
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
I wrote about him on Quora when someone asked me to watch the film and give my opinion. This is what I said:
If you liked this movie…… stop reading. This is not going to make you happy.
Dreadful
Boring
Illogical
Long
Irritating
Mind numbing
Baffling (the appeal, really I do not get it)
It’s supposed to be some essay on society. Maybe said essay would have applied back in the eighties. Some guy riding around and filming awful things that bother everyone else for profit? Shocking… back then.
People do this now for “likes” on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, you name it. People run towards disaster with their cell phones out and ready. You’re telling me that him doing it for cash is weird? People say the main character is a psychopath. No, not even close. Creepy doesn’t equal psychopath. He was written in a nonsensical way. He’s so low functioning that he’s a petty thief that idiotically tries to gain employment with the guy who knowingly buys his stolen metal. No one would do this with three working brain cells.
Okay, so he’s low functioning right? Psychopath or not? Nope, because then he’s smart enough to embark on his new career and be driving a car conservatively priced at $44,000.00 in a rapid period of time. Wow, not so low functioning all of a sudden? Did he suddenly become Charlie from, Flowers for Algernon?
He has low self esteem, that was made pretty obvious when he had to blackmail Nina into sexual acts. He had rage issues, obvious when he broke a mirror for no reason. He was constantly needing to take deep breaths to calm himself down. Apparently he’s some raging beast champing at the bit. He was distracting, irritating, and overall just not interesting.
As the film unfolded his self obsession became more and more nauseating. He watched his own videos, not because he was attracted to the gore, but because it was his work. There were several things that spoke to narcissistic tendencies. That I picked up on easily. He was only happy when people recognized him and praised him. All he cared about was people looking at him like he was amazing. He lived for it. Everything was about him. His business, how he appeared, how he was perceived, what people thought of him. The ride on the narcissistic roller coaster got old.
Three of us sat and watched that mistake of a film. None of us liked it. We all felt that it was a complete waste of time. I will not be rewatching it again. Ever.
Thanks for your response. Lou Bloom is actually one of the few characters I've seen in a film that have actually disturbed me. He's so overly manipulative and arrogant in his interactions with others. He's one-dimensional too, which doesn't make him compelling. Malignant narcissist would seem much more accurate, although he's practically more of a caricature. The character is just very sleazy and slimey, and is depicted without any sympathetic traits or actions. I mean, for Pete's sake, even the Tooth Fairy from the film Red Dragon had some backstory about abuse that could explain some of his motivations. Definitely not a psychopath, but at least he was multidimensional.
I can usually feel some empathy for most characters, and even a couple of real-life people who have committed horrible acts, but Bloom was definitely not one.
I agree. He is quite one dimensional and uninteresting because of it.
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.
I agree
Thank you I’ll definitely check if out
I am going to do a post on Ray I think.
Hey Athena, a post on Ray would be great, I'm a big fan of the show. You could take examples from the show and describe how well they reflect psychopathy. Also, I'm interested if you think his character is consistent with psychopathy over all 3 seasons, there is an episode where he seems upset describing his childhood to his girlfriend and I thought this was the only inconsistency, then again it could have been part of his 'mask' for that specific situation. I also wonder if a psychopathic lead in a series of multiple seasons has the longevity to entertain an emotional audience that are interested in seeing emotional highs and lows.
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?
Nah, he's just the product of the Soviet System.
If they blend in, I wouldn't know who they are. That is the issue with psychopaths. If they are doing their job well you will never know who they are.
Can't help respecting Putin. He doesn't faff about! I'll give him that!! x
Athena do you have a character that is similar or closer to a psychopath that you can site?
Ray from Mr Inbetween. Truly the closest I have ever seen.
Thank you
Athena, I’m not sure if I missed it but do you have a character that is close to a psychopath?
Also Frank Fontaine from the game Bioshock.