ARE PSYCHOPATHS PORTRAYED ACCURATELY IN THE MOVIES

Episode Transcript

(00:02):
Welcome to the Psychopath Podcast, apodcast that discusses everything about psychopathy. Here's
your host, doctor Carlos. Welcomeeverybody. Today we're gonna be talking about

(00:33):
do the movies actually portray a realpsychopath? Before we get started, if
you want to support our podcast,please hit that share and like button.
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or Facebook, please share it.It really does help us out. You
can check out other podcasts a circleof inside productions if you want to do
one called Inside the Criminal Mind,where we weekly or so try to share

(00:55):
a story about a serial killer.Usually serial killers are not that well known,
sometimes they are, sometimes or not. We also have another show called
Psychology Tippets, where we talk aboutdifferent things in psychology, and a host
of other podcasts you might be interestedin. So today we're gonna be talking
about do the movies actually portray psychopathsaccurately? We see them all over the

(01:15):
place, right, there's movies thatall over the place that have psychopaths.
For instance, to name a fewfrom the last seventy years, it can
be said to portray psychopathy or antisocial behavior. It is a slight distinction
because we can go back as farback as nineteen forty seven Charlie Chaplins Monsieur
Verdeaux or Carol Reid's The Third Manin nineteen forty nine. You also have

(01:40):
Let's See Here, Do You Ever? Popular, Jonathan Demme's Silence in the
Lambs in nineteen ninety one, DavidFincher's Seven These Are Just These, and
many other films portray murderers without anyempathy or remorse. Many of these movies
also share an interest in the relationshipbetween the psychopath and society and rules and
conventions, and one, actually Iforgot to mention. Fritz Lang's m The

(02:06):
main character, Hans Beckert, killsyoung girls, but a central message of
the film is that members of thecriminal underworld are motivated to hunt Beckert to
stop the police interests that he hasstirred up. Thus, it is not
just the sole killer that is amenace to society, but even those who
want to clean up society. Ananalogy of the then dawning fascism, This
can be seen as a comment onthe human monster and narrative the monster is

(02:27):
not one person, but dangerous ideasor politics. Similar pain points are made
in other movies as well. However, the callous, manipulative characters portrayed in
movies often lack some important characteristics inthe psychopath that are important to teach other
people, especially students of forensic psychologyor even criminal justice majors. Rather than
acting like patients with psychopathic traits,many of them are highly deliberate characters who

(02:51):
possess narcissism and sadistic traits. Now, mind you, narcissistic personality traits are
a d related to psychopathy to somedegree, but they are not the same
thing. They're very different individuals.The typical movie psychopath appears to behave is
that they are entitled to do whatthey want to do, to wish to
control and dominate others, and tosee themselves as superior and intelligence to others.

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Like some very seriously narcissistic people,the typical characters and these movies appear
to perform in front of an audienceand have an exquisite sensitivity to the impression
they make on others. Like reallife narcissists, they are often vain and
envious, and many of these psychopathiccharacters also appear to be very intelligent calculated
to have a very clear plan ofwhat they're doing. So let's look at

(03:34):
these psychopaths. We're going to lookbriefly here at the limitations of these common
portrayals of psychopathy in the movie.When using films to illustrate illustrate psychopathic personality,
one needs to consider something. Theyneed to consider how the character in
the film has relevance to the pointsof psychopathy that clinicians and others need to
learn. There are at least threeaspects of psychopaths that are not captured by

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these calculated villains. The first isthat in chopathy is described by Cleckley in
one of the most famous books,Masked by Sanity, that he wrote years
ago in nineteen eighty two, andin later accounts of psychopathy by the expert
Robert Hare and Newman, there's amarked lack of purpose and a high degree
of impulsivity. Cleckley strongly emphasized.Coleckley is c L E. C.

(04:23):
K l e. Y strongly emphasizedthe absence of any clear motivation for psychopaths
deviant and delinquent behaviors. They havea tendency to drift around in life.
Actually, one of the main jobsthat they tend to have They tend to
go to temporary agencies. There's ahigh correlation between psychopaths and temporary, temporary
temp agencies tep agency is what Iwas trying to say, and even quite

(04:46):
literally drift from place to place withouta plan. Many of them have a
hard time with relationships as well.This aspect of psychopathy is also reflected in
Hair's model. It's h A R. H A R. E is one
of the one of the well knownexperts of psychopathy, and particularly with regarding
his model, in particular with regardsto the lifestyle dimension of techlists. He

(05:09):
created an assessment what we call itin the world of psychology, an assessment
or a test, for instance,the pcl R in areas like parasitic lifestyle,
irresponsibility lacking realistic goals. In contrasts, many villains clearly have deliberate and
very precise plans and motivations, althoughdevian ones. But this is not a

(05:30):
Caraman characteristic. You got to understandsomething. When Hair created this checklist to
determine psychopathy, he doesn't say it'snot a black of white yes or no,
you have it. It's actually ona continuum, so you have certain
degrees of psychopathy. The second aspectthat is usually missing in movie villains is
that, in spite of the factthat many of Cleckley's cases were described as
intelligent, later studies have failed tofind a correlation between psychopathy and intelligence.

(05:55):
So he had a skewed sample.And you can get his book. It's
a great book. It's really interestingif you like those story is. Therefore,
the unusually high intelligence of movie villainsmakes them unsuitable to illustrate real life
psychopathy. Yes, I know TedBundy, for instance, is when everybody
points out, but he's actually notthe most common there. Actually a lot
of them don't have very high intelligence. A fair limitation is that it is

(06:16):
common for movies to show a completeabsence of true change in villains with psychopathic
traits. This may be seen asa realistic reflection of the persistence of psychopathic
traits, especially emotional and interpersonal aspectsof psychopathy. However, in reality,
many people who have anti social behaviorsand psychopathic traits are able to make changes
in their behaviors, or struggle todo so. A lot of times they

(06:40):
fake they know how to get arelationship going, they know how to maintain
one, they're very good in readingpeople. It's very difficult for a psychologists
a lot of times to work withthem because they're being constantly read by the
psychopath as well well. It canin fact, in clinical practice, medical
students, nurses, psychologists, prisonpsychologists are all likely to meet patients with

(07:05):
any range of psychopathic traits. Again, remember it's a range. In prison
setting is a substantial number of antisocialinmates are found, and psychopathic inmates are
found outside of prisons, substance abusetreatment centers, or among the settings where
a very high degree of psychopaths canbe expected as the core occurrence of anti
social personality disorder and psychopathy and substanceuse disorders is strongly elevated. Now,

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mind you, psychopathy is not inthe DSM five, which is the manual
for psychologists. Anti social personality disorderis, and we do have a podcast
that discussed the distinction between those two. Even among patients with mood and anxiety
disorders, rates of anti social personalitydisorder are elevated, with the highest occurrence
in mania and hygrophobia. Given thatpsychopathic traits are likely to lead to homelessness

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and unemployment, again totally you know, they work a lot in temp agencies,
those working with labor market programs,and in homeless people are also likely
to encounter substantial number of patients thepsychopathic traits. And I don't like really
to use movies as a way toshow traits of certain mental disorders because they

(08:13):
don't cover the whole gamut. Buta film that that portrays that does a
decent job in portraying a anti socialpersonality is a movie called Monster, and
it portrays an unsuccessful struggle to changein that character. The movie is based
on the true story of Eileen Warnos, a female serial killer. Warreno's had
a difficult childhood with abuse and substanceabuse, growing up with alcoholic grandparents,

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which is a very common ideology orcause for or not cause, but common
pattern among people with anti social personalitydisorder or psychopathy ideology is where do it
originate from? So this is oneof the contributing factors. She became a
prostitute by the age of thirteen,pregnant in the same year. The movie

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focuses on the nine month period doingwhich Warredos began robbing and murdering her clientele.
When the movie first shows Warrenos she'sspending time alternating between drinking in bars
and working as a street prostitute.The movie portrays Warrenos as a desire has
a desire to build up normal relationshipwith her female spouse, Tira More.
In order to normalize her life,Warrenos applies for jobs, but fails to

(09:18):
get them because of her entirely unrealisticemployment plans until several lives during the job
interviews, which they're known to do. Another factor that causes her to fails
her low tolerance for frustration. Also, while Warrenos appears to have strong feelings
for her significant other More, warrenKnows quickly becomes more and more exploitive of
More, which they do a lotas well as psychopaths, and Warnos appears

(09:39):
more or less unaware of the waysin which she is putting pressure on her
partner. Thus, the movie Monsterportrays a woman who displays a full range
of anti social behaviors and empathy deficits. While the Warners of the film may
be slightly less psychopathic than the realwar Knows, it does illustrate her anti
social and hints of borderline per personalitypretty well. So if you're gonna watch

(10:03):
a movie you wanted to kind ofget a better idea that where Else is
one of those movies. So bottomline, psychopaths and the movies are often
portrayed as predatory monsters. Movies areto be used to teach students by psychopathy.
The movie should go beyond the monsteraspect and portray issues relating to psychopathy,
such as relationship issues and the factorsthat hinder change, and also their

(10:26):
emotional relationship problems and the problems theyhave with substance abuse. But you won't
usually get that and I get it, or trying to make movies out of
it. That's the way it is. We're gonna continue to look at this
is interesting seeing serial killers and psychopathsin the movies and the media and what
effect that has. Thanks for listening, everybody,