--- Nathan Cain <
IndieCrime@gmail.com> wrote:
> I don't know that I 100% buy my own oppressed
female
> argument, but I
> would say that Brigid is not a psychopath. She's
a
> greedy schemer
> which makes her just like every other character
in
> the book, including
> Spade, especially Spade. As you say, Spade at
least
> suspects her of
> murdering Thursby from the beginning and
then,
> instead of confronting
> her immediately, he sleeps with her and deceives
her
> up till the very
> end, when he can do the most damage, and when
he's
> sure there's
> nothing more in it for him. He's as much of
a
> manipulator as she is,
> and his behavior towards Thursby's widow shows
that
> he's not just
> screwing around with Brigid to get back at her
for
> what she did. It's
> a pattern for him. Revenge doesn't really enter
into
> it. He is, as
> Hammet described him, "a blonde Satan."
***************************************************** Okay!
The "blond Satan" bit is what Spade looked like. There is a
cunning cast to his face that makes him look shrewd. I don't
believe that Hammett meant or implied he was 'satanic'
philosophically.
I define a psychotic as a person whose reality has little in
common with the reality of the people they live around.
Psychosis is a very interesting and hard to detect mental
disorder. One of the first signs is irrational lying. If a
person lies for no logical reason, (a logical reason for
lying is to hide embarrassment) they are quite possibly
psychotic. People who believe they are on the trail of a
priceless heirloom which is more important to them than human
life are, by definition, psychotic. Even if they're right,
which in this case they were not, this is an irrational
method of solving a problem. O'Shaughnessy has no reason
whatsoever not to put her cards on the table when she first
meets Spade & Archer. Her intent is to manipulate and use
them. All of these people seeking the Falcon are psychotics.
Their shared reality is completely out of wack. Spade, due to
his experience with criminals, can get his head around their
reality without getting sucked into it. This is really his
talent.
Couple of interesting points: psychosis is a mental disorder.
Sociopathy, a word which today is often used interchangeably
with psychosis, is a personality disorder. This is an
important distinction. They share narcissism but a sociopath
may be in the here and now, just think they're better than
other people to the extent they don't have to obey the same
rules. A psychotic always has an unique world-view. That's
the difference. These two disorder afflict about 5% of US
citizens. Less than 1% of psychotics &/or sociopaths are
actually criminals. They tend to be very charismatic, often
have high IQs, many people driven to executive jobs suffer
from these problems. Richard Nixon, for instance, is
literally a text-book example of a psychopath as was his
Attorney General, John Mitchell. They believed that the
schemes they worked up were more important than the laws they
were both sworn to defend.
Patrick King
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