The Psychopath as Hero

It's so easy for a moviegoer to slip into a darkened theatre and watch movies like Psycho, The Red Dragon, Seven, and the Silence of the Lambs, maybe even identifying with how psychopaths live out their grotesque, secret, and compelling revenge. We watched, eyes wide open, fascinated, almost embarrassed to enjoy what our own conscience forbids.

Judging by the hundreds of movies about psychopaths currently streaming as documentaries, docudramas, or fictionalized psychopaths we remain loyal followers of these characters who tantalize our deeper, primitive brains.

Psychopaths cover a wide spectrum. The Psychopath as Avenger is a big winner in the popular imagination.

Though on hiatus for ten years, Dexter returns struggling to not succumb to his baser instincts. Compelled by injustice, his dark passenger rises again to manage misdeeds the law cannot. Avengers compel. They do not offend our sensibilities. Our cognitive brain can make sense of their righteousness. Somebody must take care of society’s evil-doers when those in charge fail.

In Prisoners, following the kidnapping and feared rape and murder of his young daughter, Hugh Jackman takes matters into his own hands. His vengeance, though understandable, moves into extreme violence. His behavior becomes psychopathic under this horrendous pressure.

The Joker is the abandoned, betrayed, and abused delusional human. Primed to take revenge for a life of abuse, he kills three wall street types for taunting a female in the subway. The Joker, as hero, catalyzes the burgeoning cultural wave of hatred of the powerful, moneyed society. He becomes the avenger of the disaffected.

There is no end to our fascination with the murder rooms and gory rituals of the classic psychopath, but The Successful Psychopath also wants their due. And we need them to distract us. We have become inured to body counts having been continuously at war since September 11th. And the mass shootings in our own country seem to have no end in sight. I suggest we are more than ever desirous of the life of the very wealthy; their every move is paraded on television and social media. If we cannot have access to that splendor, we can daydream. These psychopaths, who mostly operate within the law astonish us.

Dr. Robert Hare with whom I did brain imaging of psychopaths, is interviewed in the 2003 documentary, The Corporation about the entity’s similarity to the psychopath. Corporations which the documentary defines as a body of investors with a singular goal of making money, contained and wrapped up in legal protections. Hare explains how corporations meet all the Psychopathy Checklist criteria.

Patrick Bateman in American Psycho provides the cultural inflection point, the merger of the psychopathic cannibal with the corporate world: The Corporate Cannibal! Yes, the film is a parody, but its success is because Bateman is an exaggeration of something true. He may not really cannibalize, but he devours whatever he wants: sex, the right cut suit, restaurant, cologne, or cognac. Don’t we recognize Patrick? Isn’t he an Instagram Influencer?

The Wolf of Wall Street’s Jordan Belfort, with his working-class origins, is aspirational like any good American. Unlike the Ivy League, wasps who were born into wealth, Jordan is a self-made person from the bridge and tunnel crowd. When the fancy wall street firm shuts down and he is jobless he builds his own corporation. He lies, cheats, betrays, and breaks every rule in the book and we are joyous with him, as fascinated as we were when we snuck into the cellar and watched the serial killer. No guilt, no embarrassment. This is the way the world is. The rich get richer.