Fictional portrayals of psychopaths

Thomas Widiger, a UK professor I spoke with who specializes in psychopathology, Holmes isn’t the only potential psychopathic hero; Breaking Bad’s main character Walter White falls within the same gray category. “[Walter White is] a meth dealer,” he began, “but he was the hero of the story and everyone wanted him to succeed, even as a meth dealer, which is very strange because he was hurting a lot of people’s lives with dealing this meth.” Such a complex relationship with the silver-screen psychopath is likely due to society’s own inability to cope with the idea that they are “not the captain of their own ship”, as stated by Dr. Widiger, and are instead controlled by psychological forces outside of their control. This inability to understand their own psychological limitations may also stem from misinformation by various psychological organizations which state that only 20-30% of people will experience some form of psychopathology, also known as mental or behavioral disorders, of which Dr. Widiger believes “frankly adds to the stigma because it gives the idea that the vast majority of the population has no psychopathology, and that we’re all extremely healthy…

Arrigo (2001, n.p.) defined psychopaths as “an elusive and perplexing psychological construct”, which across history has experienced several degrees of social condemnation. Similarly, the public’s perception of a psychopath, such as Ted Bundy and Jeffrey Dahmer, is someone who has committed such horrific violent crimes as a serial and mass murder. As explained previously, a psychopath does not need to express violent tendencies to have developed a lack of emotional attachment, which many have…

Introduction “You’ve got some steel in you Scabbard... so perhaps the name is appropriate.”- A one line description by an onlooker describes the character of my story’s protagonist Anna Scabbard. Throughout my extended project I have explored that ‘steel’, that callous and determined attitude she presents. I have done this by way of exploring academic sources, such as psychopath profiling or medical journal descriptions of the symptoms of traumatic brain injury, as well as looking into the…

Human development has been the center of much debate for thousands of years. Scholars often refer to this discourse as the nature vs. nurture debate - nature defined as the genetic disposition of a person, and nurture defined as the exterior influence. This debate has been a major theme in areas from professional psychological fields to fictional works. Mary Shelley is one famous fictional author that addresses this conflict in her well known novel Frankenstein, a tale about a creature that is…

Sometimes, he is a child, following orders and being influenced by thoughts of the consequences. Other times, he takes over the position his mother previously played in his life. His memory of his mother portrays her as very protective, hard to please and consistently ordering him around. He could also possibly have paranoid schizophrenia. It is difficult to determine because the audience has no fact checker with his memory. It is clear his reality is not accurate due to his actions, but when…

The show and the book are two very different scenarios, but they can contain the same ideas. For example, every person has a different brain and therefore thinks and reacts differently to the world around them. But in this way, many people are also similar to each other because of instinct or wanting to survive. Some who have murdered never let go of the past, can never see past it because it has torn them apart more than they ever wanted. This includes self defense or premeditated murder as…

meaning; Mailer presents his attempt to elicit meaning upon them. (1981: 42-3) Further in journalistic fiction, characterization transcends the conventions of traditional reporting with portrayal of people with psychological depth (Mark H. Mass 13). Wolfe described this technique as “... giving the full objective description, plus something that readers had always had to go to novels and short stories for: namely, the subjective and emotional life of the characters” (Tom Wolfe and E. W. Johnson…