The Hidden Personalities
“Psychopaths do not act like Hannibal Lector or Norman Bates. They come off like Hugh Grant, in his most adorable role.” Eric and Dylan are true psychopaths. Psychopaths develop in many different ways. Some hide their psychopathic ideals like Eric and Dylan.
Some let their feeling show for the world to see and do not hide their weaknesses in the shadows like Hannibal Lector and Norman Bates.
Hannibal Lector is not afraid to show his inter most feelings to the public. Hannibal craves the horrible things he does to people’s love ones. He does not restrict the inklings of a thought that comes in his thoughts. The movie that portrays his extreme capability of the most awful crimes is Silence of The Lambs. Norman
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Bates craves to kill as well and does not care who knows. He kills in vigorous ways that in some ways makes him a coward. Norman Bates killed many people including his mother. The movie and TV shows Bates Motel captures Norman perfectly. Eric and Dylan are very different comparing them to Hannibal Lector and Norman Bates.
They are more like Hugh Gant in the way that they hide their psychopathic ways. Eric likes to talk his way of any situation. Eric can be lying straight to someone’s face, but the way he smoothly talks nothing is suspected. Speaking to girls, Eric can win them over with his quick wit, dazzling dimples, and disarming smile (6). Dylan is different in those ways. He receives girls by passing them a Chips Ahoy cookie instead of a real conversation (7). The day of the shooting Eric and Dylan show a side that they have hidden for so long. Eric shows many signs of psychopathy. He writes, “I will choose to kill,” but Eric’s explanation never adds up (239). Dylan mainly just wants a way out of his depression not to kill anyone. Dylan has a great amount of anger problems. Most of Dylan’s problems are when he is younger. He and his friends were slipping around in the creek when Dylan falls in the mud. His friends howling with laughter upset Dylan. “STOP!” Dylan screams, “STOP LAUGHING AT ME!” “STOP! STOOOOOOOOOOOOP!” The boys abruptly stopped laughing (126). Dylan still carries these anger problems throughout the book. This behavior shows he has problems.
Psychopaths come in big and small packages with many different forms of personalities. Most of the time these psychopaths pop up in the middle of the darkness when people are least expecting it, like at Columbine. There are many types like Eric and Dylan, who hide their emotions. Then, there are people who are open to their craziness and enjoy their lives as a psychopath, like Hannibal Lector or Norman Bates. Always remember, never judge a book by its
cover.
Robert Hare. “I want to tear a throat out with my own teeth like a pop can,” he writes in a journal entry, just months before the attacks (Cullen 294). Eric had a major sadistic side to him and dreamt of destroying the human race entirely. He found himself to be superior to nearly everyone. Hare created a special screening test used for mainly juveniles that listed ten hallmarks of early psychopathy. Eric spoke about nine of the ten hallmarks on his website alone, some in grave detail. But Dylan, on the other hand, showed none of these traits, except possible persistent aggression. According to Dwayne Fuselier, the head profiler on the Columbine case, Dylan hardly seemed committed to the plan the boys had organized. His main goal was to kill himself, not other people. “.......Good god i HATE my life, i want to die really bad right now,” he writes in the end of a journal entry (174). This is one of several times he talks about suicide in his journal. Sometimes, his self-hatred strayed away from exclusively himself to other people. These were the times
Juxtaposing Dylan’s and Eric’s personality traits defies the readers’ expectations. Cullen first uses opposing language to focus on the boys’ conflicting views on the attack. Dylan, Cullen argues, visualized the attack as an escape from reality: he didn’t plan to follow through with it, simply fantasizing about a single attack. Eric, however, truly wanted to destroy everyone. Later, this contrast becomes more prevalent when Cullen remarks, “Eric launched a new charm offensive… he worked his ass off to excel. Dylan didn’t even try to impress Andrea” (258-259). The decision to place the sentences consecutively helps the readers gain insight into the killers’ minds before the attack. By starkly contrasting the murderers’ thoughts, it corrects the misconception that they targeted specific groups of people because they were bullied outcasts. Instead, the readers realize, Eric was quite charming. There was no specific “hit list”, as the media hypothesized, rather the killers planned to murder
When people hear the word “Sociopath,” theyat automatically think about serial killers like John Wayne Gacy, Jeffrey Dahmer, or Ted Bundy. These men were notorious sociopaths. Although just because someone is a sociopath it does not always make them a murderer.
The psychopath know the reasons behind acting a certain way and just don't think about the consequences. Even in the DSM-IV clear definitions of a psychopath doe not exist but the closes to diagnose is anti-social personality disorder. Dr. Hare instead developed the Psychopathy Checklist for people to diagnose psychopathy. The first part of the Psychopathy Checklist looks at the emotional and interpersonal traits of the disorder(Hare, 1993). Some of the emotional qualities that the clinician would look for is as followed: glib/superficial, egocentric/grandiose and lack of empathy.
Psychopaths are strict when committing a crime. They plan there crime before they do it. Because they think there crimes through, they are hardly found about. In the article, “Psychopath vs sociopath” it says “tendency to participate in schemes and take calculated risks to minimize evidence or exposure.” People portray them to be very violent people but it is rare for them to do violent crimes. They tend to do smaller crimes but they can be serial killers. As they feel no guilt when doing the crime, although, when they do a big crime they can be undetected for a long
When it comes to the topic of Psychopaths, most of us will readily agree that they are broken somehow. Where this agreement usually ends, however, is on the question of why they are the way they are. Whereas some are convinced that it has to do with biology, others maintain that it is because of environment. On example of a young psychopath is Justina Morley. In an article by Katherine Ramsland, she explains the events of the 2003 murder trial of Jason Sweeney ending in the conviction of Justina Morley and 3 other boys. As the story goes, Morley, fifteen at the time, was the ring leader and posed as Sweeney’s girlfriend while also having sexual relations with two of the three boys involved. The intent was to rob Sweeney, sixteen years old, of the $500 he had earned working with his father. Morley persuaded Sweeney to follow her to an isolated area where the other boys would be waiting. Not only did they rob him, the boys delivered fatal blows with a hammer, hatchet, and rock. Edward Batzig, Nicolas Coia, and Domenic Coia were all convicted of first-degree murder and will serve life in prison. However, Morley, the mastermind, was allowed to plead to third-degree murder in exchange for her testimony; she will be out of prison before she is thirty-five. In her statements, she described herself as “a cold-hearted, death worshiping bitch, who survives by feeding off the weak and lonely,” she wrote “I lure them and then I crush them.” (Ramsland, 1) Morley was the only one who knew about the paycheck and controlled the boys with sexual favors, money, and drugs. She also wrote “it’s funny, how easy it is to persuade them into lies” (Ramsland, 2), admitting manipulation is something she does often and well. I can’t help but wonder why she...
...res of the psychopaths and gives the reader various examples of these individuals playing out these characteristics in everyday life. A widely used checklist is provided so the reader can get a wide spanning view of what is accounted for when scoring a psychopath. This form of research is very important within the deceitfulness of this population; it allows the professional to ignore their words and examine their actions. Hare made it clear that it is not uncommon for there to be an emotional and verbal disconnect from their actions. With virtually no emotional functioning psychopaths feel no remorse for the offenses that they commit and it is very important that we work towards using the opportunities we have to study and assist these populations; not only for them but for ourselves.
Psychopaths literally feel nothing when it comes to violence or fear. Levy studies show that the emotional sectors of the brain are damaged. This makes them dangerous. They can not see that something is hurting or they are hurting someone.
Both The Silence of the Lambs and Seven are considered to be more psychological in nature, as they present killers whose motivations are explainable. The unexplainable is infinitely more terrifying than the explainable so in elucidating the motivations to their gruesome behavior the audience is given an easy out. Believing that evil has a root cause, the audience does not have to accept the shocking hypothesis that evil can simply exist without rhyme or reason. Even in the masterpiece Halloween (1978) we are tossed a half-hearted psychological explanation as to why Michael Myers does what he does. The psychobabble that Donald Pleasance spouts is simply that Myers is "pure evil," and there are some vague connections made between Myers witnessing his sister engaging in premarital sexual activity and his slaughtering tendencies.
Dr. Hannibal Lecter a character in the film The Silence of the Lambs is portrayed as a brilliant forensic psychiatrist, an extremely refined gentleman with a charismatic and charming personality. Hannibal Lecter is meticulous in appearance, speaks very exactly, has immaculate wittiness, and astounding intellect (Demme, 1991). Though not directly indicated in the film, there is clear evidence of his educational background as he was a well-known forensic psychiatrist which requires an extensive amount of education. This film did not speak to Lecter’s relationship history nor his childhood background. Hannibal Lecter was sanctioned to the Baltimore State Forensic Hospital for cannibalistic crimes he committed against his own patients during his practice as a psychiatrist (Demme, 1991). At the start of the film it was indicated that he had been housed at the hospital for approximately eight years.
What is a psychopath? What type of person can be characterized by this and how do they come to be? But first before we can answer these questions we must first know what a psychopath is. Psychopaths are people suffering from chronic mental disorder with abnormal or violent social behaviors; clinically it is a person who has a lack of what we would consider a conscience. Psychopaths are seen to suffer from a lack of empathy because of psychological, genetic and environmental factors. Scientists have many theories concerning psychopaths. Scientist do not have a definite clear cut answer on what is the cause for psychopathy but they have many ideas; nature and the nurture of the person. Nature is the genes that the person carries. The nurture of the person when they were a child is simply means how they were treated when they were growing up and/or how they were raised. Some scientists even consider it a possibility that it could be a mixture of the two.
Sociopaths are prevalent among society, and some researchers, like Martha Stout, claim that one out of every twenty-five people is a sociopath. However, this statistic is incorrect. This statistic is based on the assumption that sociopaths and psychopaths are the same people—which is untrue. While the sociopathic and psychopathic traits overlap, sociopaths differ in that they are obviously nervous and agitated, unable to create the illusions that psychopaths are so proud of. They live on the fringes of society, uneducated and unable to keep a steady job. Psychopaths, unlike sociopaths, are suave and able to maintain an illusion of conformity and maintain relationships on a superficial level. Both, however, are dominantly male, tend to disregard the rights and social mores of others, and have a tendency display violent and disruptive outbursts without remorse. Unlike psychopaths, who completely lack remorse and the ability to love, sociopaths may attach themselves to certain people, though they still remain contemptuous of the rest of humanity (7).
I was reading threads on Reddit the other day about multiple serial killer cases and I always questioned myself, “Why would someone do this? Are they even human?” It is fascinating when these characters are presented in movies since we get to understand their backgrounds sometimes, but in the real world, not so much. Movies that include these type of qualities help us try to sympathise and understand the complications going on behind an
One of the biggest traits of psychopath serial killer is their inability to empathize with human feelings. There is no generic profile for psychopath serial killer. Serial killers differ in many ways, including their motivations for killing and their behavior at the crime scene. They will use people for excitement, to build self-esteem. In the movie the behavioral science doctor mentions that Dr. Lecter ate a nurse’s tongue and during the ordeal his pulse rate never raised above eighty-five, which is usually a pulse pate of a regular person that is resting. The calmness he displays is a shallow emotional response, as well as lacking empathy or remorse.
After reviewing the movie “Silence of the Lambs”, directed by Jonathan Demme, making a profile of one of the main characters Dr. Hannibal Lector was fairly easy. This character is present thorough throughout the film and showed depth and complexity, helping develop a genuine psychological profile. Dr. Hannibal Lector from the move “Silence of the Lambs,” has Antisocial Personality Disorder, he fits all diagnostic criteria for the disorder and we can see great development through his lifetime.