The "new imporved" Yahoo makes it impossible to comment on
specific paragraphs in reply. Such is "progress"!
Judging from your remarks, Richard, there seems to
be a conflict of opinions between the medical/psychologocal
communities and the legal community regarding antisocial
personality disorder. Both Hazelwood and Vorpagel site this
problem as sociopathic rather than psychotic. Antisocial
Personality Disorder is the problem you find in successful
businessmen who decide to murder their wives rather than
divorce them. This is not the same problem you find with an
Ed Kemper or Ted Bundy. These latter psychotics
emerge from a much lower economic circumstance and their
motives are fantasy diriven, not practical. Both types of
murderers are narcissists but the sociopath functions in the
world at a much higher level than the psychopath usually
does. This is the problem with the fictional character
Hanabal Lecheter. No criminal like that has ever existed. A
person sufficiently organized to get through medical school,
never mind excell in it as Lecheter did, does
not commit that kind of crime. The types of crime
Lechter committed are, in real life, committed by much less
organized individuals. Criminologists would expect Lechter to
be a med school drop out, not a successful psychiatrist.
Professionals commit different types of crimes. In terms of
legal experience, we know that there is an economic factor to
murder that is consistent in all known cases. This is why I
question the physiological theory as a consistent driver in
this behavior.
As to the relationship between Gutman and Wilmer I
doubt there's any actual "affection" on either side. Gutman
may find Wilmer's youth and violent exterior attractive. He
obviously enjoys controlling and manipulating him. For Wilmer
I suspect Gutman represents financial security. As to how
wealthy Gutman actually is, I doubt he has much more than the
ten grand he flourishes around. I've read that Hammett based
him on the eccentric Englishman Aleister Crowley. Crowley's
family were brewers and he inherited a considerable fortune
as a young man but spent it very quickly publishing books
that did not sell well at the time. Crowley was never known
to work in any capacity except as a writer/publisher, but he
was also always broke and had a hard time affecting the air
of genteel leisure important to his station in life. Like
Gutman, Crowley was obsessed with Freemasonry and the Knights
Templar and he was considerably overweight and openly
bisexual with a
propensity for tough young men he'd pick up in bath
houses. I think Wilmer kills for the sense of power it gives
him and if left free long enough will probably kill Gutman.
Gutman would trade Wilmer for a black statuette. He is
nothing more than amusement and protection to the fat man.
There's no Bosie & Ocar Wilde here... and note how
fast those two turned on each other.
Patrick King
--- On Wed, 6/4/08, Richard Helms <
Racerick75@aol.com> wrote:
From: Richard Helms <
Racerick75@aol.com> Subject: RARA-AVIS: Re: Mental
illness? To:
rara-avis-l@yahoogroups.com Date: Wednesday, June 4,
2008, 11:06 AM
--- In rara-avis-l@ yahoogroups. com, Patrick King
<abrasax93@. ..> wrote:
>
>
> > Bringing this conversation back to topic,
would you
> agree that the villains in THE MALTESE FALCON all
have
> different types of psychotic personality
diorders?
>
Psychotic? That's debatable. Reid Meloy, the current darling
of the psychopathy crowd, says that psychopathy (diagnosed as
Antisocial Personality Disorder) is actually a psychotic
condition.
Robert Hare, a Canadian researcher, produced a two-factor
theory of psychopathy back in the 1980s. According to Hare,
psychopaths are noted for 1)a glib, remorseless manipulation
of others for personal gain (Brigid O'Shaughnessy and
Guttman?), and 2)leading a chaotic, disorderly lifestyle
(Joel Cairo, or perhaps even Spade himself, given that he was
sleeping with Archer's wife and was otherwise somewhat
dissolute?).
According to Meloy, it is the second part of Hare's
two-factor theory that supports his contention that
psychopaths are also psychotic. Meloy, however, is a
psychodynamicist, a branch of psychology that still looks for
intrapsychic explanations for aberrent behavior. Meloy
describes the development of psychopathy as the building of a
'wall' between feeling and not feeling. The psychopath
compartmentalizes his feelings because they disgust him, and
by cutting himself off from 'human' feelings he loses contact
with 'reality' (the mark of psychosis). In a marvelous quote
that I hope to have one of my characters paraphrase someday,
Meloy cites the words of multiple-murderer Dennis Nilson, who
said, "I was killing myself only but it was always the
bystander who died."
If you want to explain a problem, however, it's always a good
idea to follow the principle of parsimony, and in Meloy's
case it's a bit of a stretch to go from normally functioning
infant to rabid psychopath. Since we do know from polygraph
and MRI studies that these individuals have physical deficits
in their limbic systems (which, by the way, are not the
result of developmental trauma. In the absence of physical
trauma to the brain they were almost all born that way), and
that those deficits are directly related to arousal, it is
much more parsimonious to accept that psychopathy is not a
psychological disorder as much as a physiological one.
If that is the case, then Brigid was certainly not psychotic.
She couldn't help manipulating people, because her poor
little amygdala simply didn't trigger guilt feelings, and
manipulations got her what she wanted. She had learned,
therefore, to manipulate, but the source of her psychopathy
was physiological (just a supposition, based on what we know
about psychopaths now).
As for Guttman, I agree with an earlier post that he was very
much like the dog who chases a car - what in hell did he
expect to do with the Falcon when he finally acquired it?
Perhaps he wanted it to extract the jewels and fence them
individually. Perhaps, as in the case of the occasional art
thief who boosts a famous painting just to keep it in a
secret room of his house, he wanted it for purely personal
reasons. Guttman obviously had the resources to pursue the
bird without the necessity of working to keep body and soul
together. It is possible that pursuit of the Falcon gave his
life meaning. In that sense, he was certainly not psychotic,
and probably not even psychopathic, since psychopaths steal
for personal short-term gain, not personal fulfillment.
Wilmer? Again, not particularly psychotic, but possibly
psychopathic. I tend to believe, however, that Wilmer was
much more likely your basic street tough who had found a
benefactor in Guttman (for whatever considerations Guttman
may have required, sexually), and didn't want to let a good
thing go. Not necessarily psychopathic, since there was a
quid pro quo implied, which would make it a relationship with
mutual benefits - something at which psychopaths don't
usually excel. And, considering how Wilmer dealt with
rejection by Guttman in the book, I would tend to think that
- despite his violent tendencies - he did harbor some
feelings of affection for the Fat Man. Again, not the mark of
a true psychopath.
I think that you could probably take just THE MALTESE FALCON
and THE WIZARD OF OZ, and write a damned fine doctoral
dissertation examining the various psychological problems of
the characters. In that sense, it's possible that truly great
fiction is based more on characters' weaknesses than on their
strengths.
Just my $.02 worth on a boring Wednesday morning. R
Richard Helms http://www.richardh
elms.net
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