On (Un)Realistic Representation of Psychopaths in Movies, and Why My Selection Might Surprise You. Part 1.

As a person who has always been interested in psychology (albeit as an amateur) and who has always been curious about the way things work, I have always been very dissatisfied with the way people with mental disorders have been depicted in movies. Yes, there have been some positive examples in the recent past, but most of the time, as Susanna Kaysen´s boyfriend put it in Girl, Interrupted, people with mental illnesses or disorders which you see on the screen “[eat] grapes off the wallpaper. They are crazy.”

This is more than obvious in the case of psychopathic characters. Most depictions of psychopaths and sociopaths (´cause they are not the same thing) in Hollywood are completely irrelevant. The audience sees a guy sticking his tongue out of his mouth who clicks his tongue and muses about his love for stewed brains, fava beans and nice Chianti, and they immediately think: “He´s a psychopath.” You just know he is. Because that is why most movies and TV series portray pychopaths. Well, someone who is so out of touch with his human side or even reality couldn´t be anything else than a psychopath, right?

Psychopaths tend to be portrayd as frightening, fiendishly clever, and with a violent streak. Most of them suffer from severe mood swings, being completely out of their minds. They blab something about mind control and world dominance, with no real motive behind their words. And while some of the characteristics might be completely true for real psychopaths, others just don´t ring a bell, as they are symptoms of other disorders or even illnesses.

So, let me tell you the difference between film and reality, which film characters are true psychopaths (and I might even shock you a few times) and which are just poseurs (out of the ignorance or laziness of the Hollywood screenwriters). Film as a medium has a major influence on the general public and is capable of forming (or even changing) their opinion(s). It tells you what is right and how to think, sending out misinformation on how a true psychopath looks like. As a result, it is too easy for real-life psychopaths to slip through the general public´s fingers, as they rely on the fact that people will recognize the signs of a psychopath in other, obviously unstable people.

 

Not all psychopaths are serial killers.

First of all, don´t believe everything that Hollywood tells you about psychopaths. In the real life, most of them of not serial killers. Not that there is not a good number of low-functioning psychopaths in the US prisons - according to neuroscientists, the estimated number is 15% to 25%. Believe it or not, most of the mid- or high-functioning sociopaths reside at the top of the social hierarchy. According to author Eric Barker, the most common position for a psychopath is a CEO (like Kevin Spacey´s character in the first installment of Horrible Bosses).

Anyway, here´s the whole list of top 10 jobs with the greatest number of psychopaths:

1. CEO     2. Lawyer     3. Media (Television/Radio)    4. Salesperson  

5. Surgeon     6. Journalist    7. Police officer    

 8. Clergy person    9. Chef     10. Civil servant

 Makes sense, right? But so far, you´ve hardly learned anything interesting. So before I launch one of the “shockers”, revealing a character that most people don´t even think of as pychopathic (after all, he is part of the law enforcement and hunting criminals! And no, it is not Dexter Morgan), I will tell you what is the difference between a psychopath and a sociopath, and also… 

How a psychopath really looks like (in terms of their psychological make-up).

According to the (in)famous Hare Psychopathy Checklist, which was originally made exclusively for incarcerated folks, there are two main Factors which make a psychopath, and these Factors contain a subgroup of symptoms that are common for most people with the Antisocial Personality Disorder (which is a broad term for everything psychopathic and sociopathic). It has 20, sometimes 21 points alltogether (depends on interpretation).
 
Factor 1 contains the most important symptoms which have to do everything with the way a psychopath thinks, feels and relates to the world. Factor 2 contains less important symptoms, and shows how the given -path behaves. The general idea is: if you have more Factor 1 symptoms, or score most of the points in both factors, you are likely to be a psychopath. If you score mostly on the Factor 2 symptoms, you are a sociopath. It does not always work that way, but mostly does.

The “Factor 1″ symptoms of the Checklist include:
1 Glibness/superficial charm
2 Grandiose sense of self-worth
3 Need for stimulation/proneness to boredom
4 Pathological lying
5 Cunning/manipulative
6 Lack of remorse or guilt
7 Shallow affect [i.e. superficial experience and expression of emotions]
8 Callous/lack of empathy

The “Factor 2″ symptoms of the Checklist include:
9 Parasitic lifestyle
10 Poor behavioural controls
11 Promiscuous sexual behaviour
12 Early behaviour problems
13 Lack of realistic long-term goals
14 Impulsivity
15 Irresponsibility
16 Failure to accept responsibility for own actions
17 Many short term marital relationships
18 Juvenile delinquency
19 Revocation of conditional release
20 Criminal versatility

I am running out of space, and so I will divide this article into four parts. This was obviously the first one ;-) I´ll be happy if you comment, whether you liked it or not. Even negative reactions count.