- They said you've turned to the dark side,
that you killed younglings.
- Now what's important to remember
is that Anakin is an adolescent.
There were most recent studies show that adolescence ends
maybe in the mid 20s, so some of his behavior
might be developmentally appropriate.
Granted, killing younglings is never acceptable.
That is not normal behavior.
Hey GQ, I'm Dr. Eric Bender, and this is "The Breakdown."
[upbeat electronic music]
"American Psycho."
- [Patrick] Anti-aging eye balm followed
by a final moisturizing protective lotion.
[soft lilting piano music]
There is an idea of a Patrick Bateman.
- Patrick's routine, at first,
it seems like something you might see in GQ,
a 20-step process to look your best for the day.
What we actually see more of here, though,
is his narcissism, the way he's describing it.
"I'm gonna do this and I'm gonna use this."
There's that preoccupation with beauty,
that he's gonna look a certain way.
What I find very interesting about him
is that he knows what he is,
and from Dr. Martin's interactions
with Jeffrey Dahmer and Dennis Nilsen,
we know that psychopaths are aware
that they function differently than other people.
He's saying, "I have this mask and this mask you see,
and that doesn't tell you anything about me.
I'm holding my cold stare behind or my coldness inside."
That is very true.
You get more into philosophical arguments here
about what do we see on the outside?
Do we really know what somebody thinks, what they do?
We really don't, and you only can go
by what you see and what someone tells you.
So there is a version of a Patrick Bateman.
There's a mask. It's very symbolic here.
He peels off this mask.
He knows there's things behind this mask.
It's almost like there's two masks.
He creates a mask for everybody to see.
He can peel off the mask himself.
No one else can, and what's behind all that?
His own psychopath inside.
He peels the mask off and reveals that.
The mask he feels off right here,
he's revealing just an outer shell to everybody else.
- [Patrick] And though I can hide my cold gaze
and you can shake my hand and feel flesh gripping yours,
and maybe you can even sense our lifestyles
are probably comparable, I simply am not there.
[soft eerie music]
- Many of Patrick's escapades, shall we say,
in the movie are around narcissistic injury,
the idea that he's perceived someone
telling him he's done something wrong
or that someone has scolded him in some way or hurt his ego,
how he feels about himself.
That drives a lot of his behavior,
and that actually falls more in line with a narcissist
and more in line with a psychopath.
"Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith."
- I am becoming more powerful than any Jedi
has ever dreamed of, and I'm doing it for you,
to protect you.
[dramatic music] [explosions boom]
- Come away with me.
- So here you see Anakin Skywalker,
and he's showing traits of a personality disorder.
A personality disorder refers to
how someone interacts with the world around them.
If it's vastly different from the cultural norm,
it could be a personality disorder,
meaning that person experiences life
and interactions with other people
and relationships very differently than the norm.
These could be elements of psychopathy.
Psychopathy is a personality construct.
It's the idea that certain personality traits combined
with behavior create a psychopath.
What a psychopath is or what psychopathy represents
is someone who is callous, uncaring,
does not feel emotion for other people,
but just uses people as pawns to gain what they want.
That can sometimes combine with narcissism or traits
of narcissism and that callousness and uncaring can combine,
and you can see that someone just goes ahead
and does whatever they want.
So that question is here. Is Anakin a psychopath?
It's important to note that people with narcissistic traits
and narcissistic personality disorder,
people with borderline personality disorder,
other personality disorder traits are not psychopaths.
It's not necessarily that someone
has a borderline personality disorder,
therefore, they are violent.
It's very important to note that mental illness
is very rarely associated with violence.
The traits of narcissism and borderline personality disorder
and histrionic personality disorder have been talked about
in terms of psychopathy and how,
when those traits pair with the callousness
and the uncaring and the unemotional side
that someone can have,
that's when things become very dangerous.
It's very important to note that people
with mental illness are not inherently dangerous.
- No!
[dramatic music]
- You're with him! You brought him here to kill me!
- No!
- Let her go, Anakin!
[Padme gags] [static hisses]
- So we're seeing traits of borderline personality disorder.
The term borderline actually refers to the idea
of walking on the border between psychotic,
where there's a break from reality, and neurotic,
where someone's really trying to manage the chronic distress
and anxiety that they feel.
Someone with borderline personality disorder
or traits of it might show chronic feelings of emptiness.
They might have an identity disturbance,
not feeling like there's a stable sense of self.
Here, was he a Jedi? Was he a Sith?
He's questioning that.
Now he seems to be more towards the Sith world.
Someone with borderline personality disorder
also makes frantic efforts to avoid any abandonment,
whether it's real or perceived.
Here, he's perceiving Padme not wanting
to do this as abandonment,
and he's frantically trying to kill her.
He's also going to go up against Obi-Wan Kenobi
as another way to avoid this abandonment.
That's his response.
People with borderline traits can also show impulsivity
or intense anger that's inappropriate.
That could mean constantly being angry
or almost having tantrums.
We see that here in Anakin.
Now what's important to remember
is that Anakin is an adolescent.
The most recent studies show that adolescence ends
maybe in the mid 20s.
The brain really doesn't develop fully until the mid 20s,
recent research is showing.
So some of his behavior might be developmentally appropriate
as he's actually coming into his teen years
and becoming a young adult.
Granted, killing younglings is never acceptable.
That is not normal behavior,
so that raises a red flag in my head,
but this has to be considered his age.
As a child psychiatrist,
that's something I'm considering, too.
I'm also wondering here about his background.
Has he had difficulty attaching to people?
So think about how he was pulled away from his mother.
His mother died.
He has a fear of Padme dying like his mother died,
so that was an issue,
and his mother was also sold into slavery.
He didn't grow up in the greatest environment.
- Love won't save you, Padme.
Only my new powers can do that.
- At what cost?
You're a good person. Don't do this.
- I won't lose you the way I lost my mother.
- The question of psychopathy,
I come back in my mind to episode six
in "Return of the Jedi,"
at the very end where Darth Vader heaves the emperor
into the towers and into the electrical storm
that he falls and plummets to his death in.
In that sense, Anakin is showing that he really does care
for his family, his son, for Luke.
It's not about him at that point.
It's really about his child,
and that is unusual for a psychopath
to have that level of love.
Recent research shows that psychopaths
do actually feel emotion, but it's typically when it comes
to them achieving the goal that they want to achieve.
So the level of love that Darth Vader shows for Luke
in "Return of the Jedi" really makes me think he's
not a psychopath.
You also have to consider the developmental age
of Anakin at this time.
I can't say for sure as a forensic psychiatrist
that this person meets criteria
on the psychopathy checklist,
which is a list of personality traits
and behaviors that suggests someone is a psychopath.
I can't say that for sure here
because there's still the development of the young person.
However, there are a lot of clues that he's on that way
or on a path to becoming a psychopath.
Later, there is that choice Anakin
or Darth Vader makes to save his son.
There is some choice.
Now, maybe there was something
that Darth Vader picked up on in that scene.
I think we're led to believe that there
was a big change of heart.
Somewhat, that's Hollywoodized,
but there is this love that comes through,
and I think that's what makes it clear
that he's not a psychopath.
In psychopathy, the studies show
that you can decrease behavior.
You can use medication sometimes even
to decrease impulsivity,
but you wouldn't necessarily teach someone to love more.
We have the benefit now of knowing
in episode six something changes,
so I can say that Darth Vader is not a psychopath.
Looking at the emperor would be a bit different.
[static hisses] [dark electronic music]
"Silence of the Lambs."
- Clever girl.
You're so close to the way you're gonna catch him.
Do you realize that? - No. Tell me why.
[slow dramatic music]
- After your father's murder, you were orphaned.
what happened next?
- Dr. Lecter is, in fact, a psychopath.
He's someone who doesn't really care about people.
You can tell already,
even in the way he interacts with Clarice,
there is this back and forth,
but it's really for his benefit.
He says, "It'll be very interesting
to learn about your upbringing,"
and then he asks her about these very traumatic times
in her life.
He wants that for his own personal gratification.
- Quid pro quo, doctor.
[slow dramatic music] [footsteps shuffle]
- Billy is not a real transsexual, but he thinks he is.
He tries to be. He's tried to be a lot of things, I expect.
- Clarice comes back to him and says, "Quid pro quo.
So I'll give you something.
You give me something, this for that."
She's also playing on his narcissism.
She's calling him doctor. She never calls him Hannibal.
She calls him doctor all the time, playing up to that.
Narcissistic traits in a psychopath often reflect a demand
for a certain respect or certain praise.
That's what goes on here. We see that in their exchange.
[static hisses] [slow dramatic music]
- Now you said that I was very close
to the way we would catch him.
What did you mean that, doctor?
- There are three major centers for transsexual surgery,
Johns Hopkins, University of Minnesota,
and Columbus Medical Center.
I wouldn't be surprised if Billy had applied
for sex reassignment at one
or all of them and been rejected.
- Some people would argue that Dr. Lecter
is not a psychopath.
Some people argue that maybe he shows some kindness
towards Clarice in his own distinct way.
Psychopaths don't have to feel absolutely nothing.
There's a study that looked at psychopaths
and whether they could feel regret,
and that study showed that psychopaths had regret
for things they did that caused them
to not win as much money in this exercise in the study
or to lose a lot of money.
What was unique about the people who scored high
on the psychopathy checklist was that they
didn't use that regret to make future decisions.
It wasn't that they lost something or didn't gain enough,
so therefore, they should think differently in the future.
It was about regretting that moment,
the retrospective regret, looking back.
They couldn't use that information
to look forward or prospectively.
So the idea is that psychopaths can, in fact,
feel some regret or have some feeling,
but it's really about them and their goal.
It's not necessarily outside.
A psychopath could care for a person or a family member,
but again, only to that end of wanting to have that family
or wanting to have that person in their life
for a certain achievement or goal.
There was a psychologist who worked with the BTK killer,
and that person even said in multiple letters to her
that he really did understand
that his crimes affected his family,
and he asked that his family be left out
of any type of research she was doing
as she communicated with him.
So I think in this case, Dr. Lecter is a psychopath,
even if he feels something,
because we've seen from research,
psychopaths can, in fact, feel things.
- Quid pro quo, doctor.
- What's interesting about the camera angle here
is you see the reflection of Dr. Lecter in the glass
where Clarice is looking at him.
First, what this scene does is it draws you
into the world of Dr. Lecter.
You're fascinated, and that's true of psychopaths.
They can be very charming and they
can be really interested in you, so it seems,
but it's really only to their end.
In a psychopath, you never know what you're gonna get.
They're pathologically lying,
so you don't know who it is that you see.
You often see a reflection of somebody,
but who is it, and what's behind that?
The question of whether Clarice Starling or an FBI agent
would talk to a psychopath or a serial killer himself
in order to find out more about a case,
it might be Hollywood plot driving, but at the same time,
it is possible because in trying to look for offenders,
a forensic psychiatrist, for instance,
who's not an FBI agent would look
at all the records possible.
There might be multiple interviews of people.
Dr. Lecter has intimate knowledge of Billy here,
so the FBI will, in fact, use what sources they can
to understand and try to solve the case,
particularly when there are active murders going on.
[static hisses] [instrumental hip hop music]
- "You."
[static hisses] [soft ethereal music]
- [gasps] Sorry!
- [Joe] You sound apologetic,
like you're embarrassed to be a good girl,
and you murmur your first word to me.
- Hello.
- We come to find out that this character
is a serial killer.
Just because he's a serial killer doesn't mean that he
can't have other obsessions or other mental health issues.
In this case, it's not a mental health issue
like depression or anxiety,
although serial killers can have those things.
Here, this makes me think of stalking.
- Do you work here?
- Guilty. Can I help you find something?
- Paula Fox? - That's a good choice.
- Hmm. I feel weirdly validated.
- There are different types of stalking.
You can have rejected stalking,
which is when someone's been rejected in some way.
There's the divorce, they've been terminated from work,
and therefore they start to stalk somebody.
There can also be predatory stalking
where you're stalking someone with the idea of spying
on them to eventually assault them in some way.
You can also have erotomanic stalking,
which is the idea that you've realized this person
is meant to be with you, and you think that they're
in love with you and you're in love with them.
You can also have the incompetent suitor type of stalking,
where someone is fixated on a person and believes
that they're going to be involved in this person's life,
and that person's gonna be their lover,
but that person's not even available.
They're someone married or someone
who's involved in something else.
You can also have what's called the resentful stalker
where someone is stalking someone or going after them
in a way just to derive pleasure
from distressing them or trying to get them upset.
In this case, I wonder because we're privy to his thoughts
and know that he's stalking this woman in some way,
is it erotomanic?
Is he thinking that there's a love relationship here
between the two of them?
Or is it predatory?
Is he planning to attack her in some way?
Is he planning to do something to her?
Given that he's a serial killer, we don't know,
but it is possible that a serial killer
could have a relationship.
Just 'cause you're a serial killer doesn't mean you
wouldn't have a relationship with other people.
In fact, some serial killers have these secret lives.
They're married, they have kids, but on the side,
at night when no one knows,
they go out and they hunt for victims.
- Oh, are you not wearing a bra? And you want me to notice.
If this was a movie,
I'd grab you and we'd go at it right in the stacks.
Have you read her fiction?
- A psychopath might want a relationship with somebody,
but typically, they're getting something out of it.
It's about them.
It's not gonna be about providing for that other person.
It's gonna be about what that person does for them.
Maybe they wanna be a father,
and maybe they're gonna try to be
with somebody who wants to have children.
Maybe they want to have sex,
but it really is about what that person wants.
"Blue Velvet."
[electronic music] [static hisses]
[slow dramatic music] [breathes deeply]
- Mommy.
[moans and whimpers]
- We see the use of substances, actually.
He's huffing on gas, some kind of substance
that's clearly making him high.
When someone is high, we do see behaviors that can vacillate
between a very happy mood and very sad mood, anger.
It can all come out at one time or in this
what's called labile mix of things,
labile, going back and forth.
So he's at one minute almost sobbing for his mommy,
and another minute, he's very angry,
and he's talking about, in a very angry way,
what he's gonna do.
He could be a sexual sadist as well,
meaning that he's deriving pleasure from the humiliation
and the suffering and the pain of his victim.
In this case, he punches her, tells her not to look at him.
He's humiliating her. He's hurting her.
He seems to be getting off on this.
He's also sold this woman's husband and child into slavery,
so there really does seem to be some kind
of pleasure he gets out of hurting other people.
He doesn't care about other people. He cares about himself.
So he's clearly a psychopath in this case.
- Mommy loves you.
- [sobs] Baby wants to fuck!
[yells] Get ready to fuck!
- Psychopaths don't have to have a component
of sexual action or sexual behavior in their acts.
We think of serial killers, and often,
there is a sexual motivation there.
Not necessarily, though.
Sometimes it's just about the killing. It's not about sex.
It's not about sexual pleasure.
That really brings in that element of sexual sadism,
when it becomes more about sexual arousal.
You can have psychopaths who are motivated by other things,
whether it's killing, whether it's financial greed,
or just hurting people, toying with people.
It doesn't have to be a sexual motivation misery.
[static hisses] [upbeat hip hop music]
"Misery."
- Well, it's brilliantly written,
but then, everything you write is brilliant.
- Pretty rough stuff, though, huh?
- The swearing, Paul.
- Annie might be original toxic superfan here,
the original troll.
Instead of having an online platform,
she actually has the author here in front of her.
She gets quite upset with what he's written,
the profanity and spills soup all over the place
as she gets so worked up over it.
- And the bank, do I tell Mrs. Bollinger,
"Oh, here's one big bastard of a check"?
Give me some of your Christing money"?
There! Look there!
See what you made me do?
- When I think of Annie,
I think of the stalking behavior and the particular type
of stalking behavior called that of an incompetent suitor,
someone who, despite having poor social skills
or potentially even some social skills,
has a fixation on someone and feels
like that person is meant for them
and that person has raised their interest in love.
That person often is in a relationship or not available,
and clearly, that's the case here.
Annie's not gonna marry this author,
but she is treating him in some stalking type of way.
We're starting to see an escalation here
where she's developing an attachment to him.
It's been said
that Annie has borderline personality disorder
or traits of that.
People with borderline personality traits
can show a frantic attempt to avoid abandonment by someone,
and in some ways, she might be so frantic here
that she's going to correct him and give him lessons
on how to write so that he will even stay there.
- Ah. [sighs]
Sometimes I get so worked up. Can you ever forgive me?
- It's fine.
- It might be that in her mind,
she's planning on a way to keep him there.
We know later she does horrific things to keep him there,
so that could be a trait of borderline personality disorder.
People with borderline personality traits
often have relationships that vacillate between all good
or idealized and all bad or totally devalued,
and that can be called splitting.
She's doing that here.
He's the greatest author, and then he's the worst author
because he uses profanity in a way that's not realistic,
but then she loves him again.
So she's back and forth on that.
The idea that she might have bipolar disorder,
you look for specific criteria for bipolar disorder.
People often colloquially use the word bipolar
to mean hot and cold or switching moods back and forth.
It's very different when it comes to psychiatry.
A bipolar disorder means that someone
has had a manic episode,
meaning that for five to seven days,
they've had an increased amount of energy
to the point that they're potentially grandiose.
They're thinking that they're gonna accomplish
and do things, write the next great novel,
change the course of humanity, play God, no God.
They might feel like their thoughts
are going all over the place and racing.
They're not sleeping because of an increased energy.
They might not need any sleep for this five
to seven-day period.
They're on top of the world.
In addition, they might be doing things
that are a change from baseline.
They might be gambling or having sex with multiple people,
doing things that are not necessarily safe or good for them.
We don't see this necessarily as a change from her baseline,
so I can't say that she hasn't bipolar disorder.
[static hisses] [soft eerie music]
- I love you, Paul.
Your mind.
- There's still that justification with Annie
of why she's doing what she does to Paul.
The question of how can she go this far?
She's got some justification in her mind,
and she does seem to be very psychopathic
in what she does here.
She's justifying it, though, because she loves him.
She's saying all of this.
Now that doesn't mean she's not psychopathic
because she's justifying it, but the fact that she has
to find some way to justify it, to me,
that might be more on the antisocial spectrum
as opposed to a psychopath.
However, if she didn't care about anybody at all,
if this were beyond just him, then I would think,
"Okay, maybe there's more of a psychopathic trait.
Here, it's a fixation on him,
so is there something particularly obsessive about him?
Is there a fixation?
Is there some kind of delusion
that this person is meant for her?
That could be a psychotic delusion.
Most stalkers actually don't have psychotic delusions.
Some do, though.
Thanks so much for watching these clips with me.
Stay tuned for part two.