Truant Mail: A Case Study Of Abnormal Psychology

Improved Essays
Truant Mail
The first I ever heard about the University of Alabama’s Neuroscience program was from a letter a woman I barely knew claimed was mine. This letter (Sent after a 2012 Big 10 Expo) had fallen into the wrong hands, thanks to the mailman and had travelled great distances from mailbox F to mailbox G. Serendipity I thought, after warily accepting my truant mail (lest it was another bill), as said letter offered a unique program tailored to fit my interests before my search for graduate programs in neuroscience ever began.
From my youth (spent on the Caribbean isle of St. Lucia), I was captivated by the macabre, and this disquieting obsession progressed into a slightly less disturbing fascination with abnormal psychology. Many an afternoon

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    The man who explored the mysteries of the human brain in a series of best-selling books succumbed to cancer at the age of 82. According to a report from Daily Mail, renowned neurologist and writer Oliver Sacks, who announced last February that he has rare eye cancer that had spread, died at the age of 82 today, August 30. Sacks, who had lived in New York since 1965, authored several other books about unusual medical conditions, including The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat and The Island Of The Colorblind, BBC reported.…

    • 423 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    An Interview with a Renowned Psychopath A psychopath interview sounds like talking to someone with a criminal history or murders with a lot of gorey details, terrifying revelations and deranged thought processes and logics. But actually this one is a little different than what you would normally expect an interview with a psychopath to be like. This psychopath interview involves Nick Simmons, a writer and television personality interviewing a renowned neuroscientist, Professor James Fallon who is author of the book ‘Psychopath Inside’.…

    • 358 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Psychopathy is a personality disorder manifested in people who use a mixture of charm, manipulation, intimidation, and occasionally violence to control others, in order to satisfy their own selfish needs (“Serial Murder”). This is exactly what killer Edmund Kemper used against his victims before committing numerous, heinous acts upon them and their corpora. Not only has Kemper been infamously used as an inspiration for many films and television shows, he also serves as a constant reminder to young women across the country to stay away from strangers. Like many literary characters we’ve read about such as Macbeth, The Co-Ed Killer has brought our nightmares to life starting when he was just a young child.…

    • 923 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Esquirol Lucid Killers

    • 1514 Words
    • 7 Pages

    In the nineteenth century a new criminal form emerged. The criminal’s heinous acts gripped the imagination of the masses. That criminal is called the lucid killer. Scientific advances led to a rejection of occult activities being held responsible for the actions of this new brand of criminals. This left one possible culprit, the people themselves.…

    • 1514 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    American Horror Story: Freak Show begins its tale in Jupiter, Florida, in the year of 1952. To the untrained eye, Dandy Mott is the physical definition of beautiful, but underneath this alluring exterior is the epitome of excess wealth, and privilege taken too far to its detrimental conclusion (DeBussey, 2016). Dandy is an intellectual man-child, incapable of finding satisfaction in anything. The world is seemingly at his fingertips, and yet he is incessantly consumed with a gnawing feeling of ennui, and a prodigious sentiment of unadorned emptiness; the only manner in which he is able to placate his monotony is through voluntary deceit, and murderous action. Psychodynamic theory, in correlation to object-relations therapy, could be employed to identify, and…

    • 2182 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    “Freud and gothic literatures are like cousins, both respond to the problems of selfhood and identity, sexuality and pleasure, fear and anxiety, in the nineteenth and twentieth century.” Freud argued that humans are not unified wholes, but internally ruptured and alienated from nature and himself (Martin 41). “The goal of the Freudian analyst, like that of Victor Frankenstein, is to re-member the dismembered parts of our fragmented selves, to cure us by making us whole. To do so he must achieve a delicate balance of scientific objectivity and sympathetic identification, remaining detached from the patient, even as he tries to understand his (or usually her) mind. (Martin 41)…

    • 587 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Satire In American Psycho

    • 281 Words
    • 2 Pages

    The most recent movie I can recall watching that deals with abnormal behavior is American Psycho directed by Mary Harron and staring Christian Bale. This has been one of my favorite movies (and books) for several years primarily due to its deep cultural satire. The movie follows the life of millionaire Patrick Bateman, who is secretly a psychotic serial killer. A series of abnormal, and disturbing, events are presented, including Bateman obsessing over his routine and physical appearance, plotting the murder of his colleague because of his business card, and enticing various women into erotic sex before murdering them. The novel does an even better job of portraying the degree of his abnormal behavior, as it is written from the perspective of Bateman’s jumbled, unorganized…

    • 281 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    According to National Alliance on Mental Illness (2016), 1 in every 5 adults experience a mental health condition. In order to explain the abnormalities and mental health conditions, psychologists use models, or paradigms (Comer, 2014, pg. 48). There are many paradigms and viewpoints to explain such behavior such as psychodynamic, sociocultural, biological, and humanistic. Specifically, the two models that are the most important to look at would the biological and humanistic perspectives. Biological theorists, over many years, have shown some of the strongest evidence against abnormal behavior, whereas the humanistic theorists have some of the weakest.…

    • 1443 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The Lord of The Tell Tale Heart What would it be to look inside the mind of a psychopath? “The Tell Tale Heart” by Edgar Allen Poe tells the story of a man who becomes obsessed with his friends eye. His obsession leads him down a path of stalking and murder. In The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R Tolkien there is a character that aids the heroes Frodo and Sam along a journey to destroy the ring.…

    • 1022 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    From First Killer to Now As Americans we`ve seen our share of flawed circumstances. For example, when the stock market crashed in 1929, or when we entered the Vietnam War, The countries faced numerous situations that have changed along the way, the first serial killer, H. H. Holmes, changed the country so much more. Many other killers have come about since Holmes, they can be quite similar to Holmes, but in a way very different. Most serial killers have similar traits that distinguish them like life changing experiences.…

    • 478 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Artaud's Illness

    • 1496 Words
    • 6 Pages

    Antoine Marie Joseph Artaud was born on September 4, 1896 in Marseilles, France. He was one of three survivors out of nine children born to a Levantine Greek mother and a wealthy ship fitter father. His parents were first cousins. Such a successive mortality rate may have been in part due to congenital problems that played a major role in his illnesses. Artaud spent time in the Army and was discharged due to “self- induced habit of sleepwalking.…

    • 1496 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    The term psychopath was established in the 1800’s to signify a personality disorder which is characterised by anti-social behaviour, lack of empathy, care and bold behaviour. Throughout history the world has witnessed a countless amount of horrifying psychopaths, but the infamous Edward Theodore Gein was a perplexing psychopath who was known for his unorthodox crimes. His real-life cases has influenced media and the creation of several fictional characters like Leather Face from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Norman Bates from Psycho. Edward Theodore Gein better known as “Ed Gein” was an American murderer, psychopath and body snatcher famous for his sick crimes of carving out people’s faces, collection of human skulls and remains, including…

    • 1991 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Great Essays

    Lauren Schletty Prof. Plunkett English 1101 16 November 2017 Silence of the Lambs Horror movies are all about that initial physiological reaction, such as racing heart and sweaty palms. They do this through the use of fear and shocking the audience. One film that does exactly is Silence of the Lambs. A serial killer known as Buffalo Bill is murdering women, and partially skinning them.…

    • 1245 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Psychological disorders and mental health issues in today’s society affect many people in a variety of ways. Many people in society are often stigmatized and labeled because of a psychological disorder shunning them from society, the work place, schools, friends, and more. However, recently through my research I see how many people are working their jobs, handling their careers, never stop working and aspiring with their goals, and face varied challenges at home, work, and out socially using a variety of therapies from medications, to psychologist visits, and even psychotherapy. There are over four hundred types of psychological disorders.…

    • 794 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The movie “Girl, Interrupted” is based on patients admitted into a mental institution, all for various amounts of time and is set in the 1960’s. The first person who will be discussed is the patient Susanna Kaysen and her eighteen-month stay. The second main character that will be discussed in this paper is Lisa Rowe. This paper will also pertain to various other patients who the author of this paper deemed important to the abnormal psychology class and its lessons.…

    • 1039 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays