Society’s Misunderstood: Not Every Psychopath Is Violent
Movies and television shows have severely misrepresented psychopaths
Introduction: The Stereotypical Portrayal of Psychopaths in Film and Television
As some of you will know, my niche within mental illness is clinical depression, generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), and panic disorder. Those are my three central diagnoses, they are the ones with which I have the most experience, and therefore they are primarily the ones about which I write. However, every now and then I diverge and cover other types of mental illness, like antisocial personality disorder (ASPD).
ASPD is often used interchangeably with sociopathy and psychopathy, the latter two of which are always portrayed negatively in the media. Psychopath has somehow become synonymous with evil. Psychopaths are always the antagonists in film and television and are invariably depicted as violent criminals with no regard for human life, spilling however much blood as is necessary to realize their own ambitions.
When you think of psychopaths in film, you think of Norman Bates in Psycho or Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs. Quick aside: how on earth did Anthony Hopkins make his eyes gleam like that? His stare alone…
