Talk:Fictional portrayals of psychopaths

a good example is wyatt mathewson from the show prison break, he shows little emotion, is smart and calulcating, and shows no fear — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.73.97.0 (talk) 21:57, 22 July 2012 (UTC)

The asserted copyvio p. is a copy of the WP article, a/c to its own statement at the bottom DGG (talk) 01:33, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

Then fix it.

Fix it up plz
I don't even see the problem. Explain your problems with the page. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Kareem Said (talk • contribs) 02:15, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
 * For one thing, "This article does not cite any references or sources." –Pomte 02:20, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

There are also two types of psychopaths, the disorganized ones (most of the ones you said are the realistic ones) and the organized ones (charming, calculating, deceptive - look up Dennis Rader who was the president of a Church, a father, a Cub Scout leader, and a sadistic serial killer). While you are not necessarily wrong with your observations, it seems like you over generalized and picked one of the types (albeit the more common one). Psychopathy is still not completely understood, and there are far too many contradictions for everyone to agree with just one. You might be better off just focusing on the characters and how they are portrayed as well as some of the characteristics that they have that are similar to real life psychopathy as well as the ones that aren't found in most cases. The majority of the people you mentioned, including the ones that you dismissed, actually do have striking similarities to real life examples. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.149.136.213 (talk) 23:48, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

Earlier version deleted
The previous incarnations of this article were, much to my annoyance, deleted see nomination. So I advise editors, wherever possible, to inoculate this article against the deletionists by studying the reasons the originals were nominated for deletion twice. They took a group of us hour and hours of work to get the originals up to encyclopaedic quality and still considered by the majority drawn to the nomination for deletion as great articles but not suitable for wikipedia. Hence all of the original material was transwiki'd to psychopaths in literature and psychopaths in film. I see no reason for not using the same references and citations (now at those places on wikibooks) that former editors did to make it encyclopaedic. -- Ziji  ( talk   email ) 00:24, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

This is why include Lennie Small: he is frequently described as lacking a conscience, which is the definition of a psychopath. I have given the opposing views as well, as with the others. Even psychiatrists admit that psychopaths need not be wholly evil (unlike abortionists, many psychopathic serial killers have unsanctimoniously accepted that they deserve to die). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.176.61.3 (talk) 21:53, 4 January 2010 (UTC)


 * This article continues to improve. Thank you for keeping it. Ziji  [[Image:Baby_tao.jpg]] ( talk   email ) 21:22, 27 December 2014 (UTC)

Tony Soprano should be added to list of TV psychopaths
He shows nearly all of the traits for psychopathy according to the Hare psychopathy checklist. He is also (eventually) diagnosed by Dr Melfi as being a sociopath. Pexise (talk) 22:58, 15 June 2011 (UTC)

Additional candidate in both Literature and movies?
What about Arthur Mersault in Albert Camus' The_Stranger_(novel)? Portrayed magnificently by Marcello Mastroiani in the movie "Lo straniero". Although both book and movie are usually discussed in terms of existentionalism, that is not the only theme that emerges. What makes the book such a fantastic read is that it is in narrative form, and the narrator sees very little wrong with his (to others) bizarre actions. Old_Wombat (talk) 09:58, 29 July 2011 (UTC)

Issues with some of the candidates chosen.
Whilst the psychopathy page and others admit freely that the definitions of the concept are somewhat vague and arbitrary, they all agree that it is a sickness and an example of an abnormal (yes, it is a weasel word) behaviour; and above all, it is a human thing. So in this list there are a whole bunch of characters who are ... how to put it .... perhaps "not completely human". Given that, how can we make any kind of meaningful statement as to whether their behaviours are "normal" or not? As examples I give you:


 * Dr Who's The Master is a Time Lord and not a human being at all. For one thing, he has two hearts.
 * Randall Flagg is an incarnation of the devil, and it is quite clear in King's books that RF is able to manifest himself as anything he chooses. Thus it would be wildly wrong to try to diagnose any kind of human trait within him, or any kind of sickness.
 * The character Nimue in Merlin is a magician, with powers beyond human.
 * Not being a player of video games I can't speak with any authority on their characters, but there is talk of zombies in that section, so again, characters that are not totally human.

The problem is, that once we start, where do we stop? Humans who display the behaviours that domestic cats sometimes do would certainly be diagnosed as ill. Does that make every cat a psychopath? Of course not. But what about the eponymous Aliens in the Scott movies of the same name. Or the Predator in the Arnie movie? 58.168.75.123 (talk) 10:33, 29 July 2011 (UTC)

Psychopathy vs. Sociopathy
There is often made a distinction in the text between sociopath and psychopath, AFAIK there is no semantic difference in the terms (i.e. they carry no difference in meaning and are completely interchangeable).