The Portrayal of Schizophrenia in American Psycho and Schizophrenia - Essay Example

Essentially, schizophrenia is a mental disorder. A person suffering from it would display several symptoms, particularly a detachment or a state that is devoid of emotion. The most extreme of these - as in the case of Bateman - is the complete break from rational thought, making them prone to violence and even to killing people without remorse.

A study conducted by Mullen (2005), for instance, revealed that 5 to 10 per cent of prisoners charged with murders have schizophrenic disorder. This is illuminated in the manner by which Bateman perpetuate his murders. He killed indiscriminately: men, women and even children. With women, he often killed in sadistic pleasure. He had no qualms about killing an animal or a child, just so he can determine what it would be like to do so. In some cases, he killed without feeling any emotion. He explained this detachment or depersonalization at one point in the film where he narrated, “although I can hide my cold gaze and you can shake my hand and feel my flesh gripping yours and maybe you can even sense our lifestyles are probably comparable: I simply am not there.

” But there are also cases when he killed because he was driven by strong emotion. For instance, he murdered his friends for mocking him and his lawyer for dismissing him. In one of his killing sprees, he tearfully broke down and exclaimed, “he just wants to be loved”. These violent, depersonalized and erratic behaviours all show the wide spectrum of Bateman’s schizophrenic disorder. It accurately portrayed how there is a wide range of disruptions in the schizophrenic’s ability to perceive the world, on thought processes, emotions and behaviours (Tsuang, Faraone and Glatt, 1).

There are people who interpret the story in the film as a mere hallucination: that all of Bateman murder happened only in his mind. In one of his matter-of-fact confessions of his crimes, for instance, he claimed to have dinner with one of his victims after he has died in his hands. Whatever the case, whether Bateman did kill his victims or they were just figments of his imaginations, there is the symptom of delusions and hallucinations. Bateman’s characterization is accurate in this respect.

He had those episodes, which he recounted in third-person perspective. I would like to say that the portrayal of schizophrenia in American Psycho is highly accurate. I would like to emphasize this in the manner by which the film and its writers provided context to Bateman’s character. The depictions of the symptoms were not the only variables provided. Rather, the film offered the environmental factors that drove Bateman’s insanity in its array of visual imagery. He was living a perfect life.

His expensive clothes, tasteful apartment, and his refinement - all these show cultivation and maintenance of materialistic existence. They were not designed to make the setting grander in the tradition of Hollywood’s sensationalist style. Instead, they highlighted the argument of a stressful way of life that is also devoid of meaning. Furthermore, Bateman was characterized as vain and obsessed with success and status. He was deeply offended when people would dismiss him as yuppy trash”. These were valid representations of the variables and circumstances that contribute to a person’s inevitable descent into schizophrenia. It is important to note that the illness is still largely unknown and that the definitive answer as to its nature rests on the symptoms manifested by schizophrenics. These symptoms, as many cases have demonstrated, arise as responses to the pressures that society puts on us.