Hannibal Lecter/Lecktor Diagnosis

[drjbrennan]

Some years ago, there was a website devoted to Dr Lecter, and it contained a detailed psychiatric diagnosis of his condition. It basically said he had a personality that judged people he met to be his equal or inferior. Equals were respected and helped etc (Clarice Starling) and inferiors were treated with the respect we would owe to an ant, possibly useful but totally disposable for our own ends.

I think that the website has closed but I wondered if anyone had come across the diagnosis?

I would love to find it again.

Thanking you in anticipation.

 

[OldTimeRadio]

My own impression of the Bad Doctor is that you found yourself in imminent danger, regardless of your intellectual level, if you committed the unpardonable sin of boring him.

And that may be precisely what differentiates Dr. Lecter from real individuals of towering intellect. Einstein, for one example, seems to have been as happy surrounded by third graders as by fellow physicists.

 

[LaurenChurchill]

So would that make him a psychopath (literally) with Histrionic Personality disorder?

 

[GNC]

I think he's a typical "I'm OK, You're Not OK". As well as being an entirely made up character.

 

[OldTimeRadio]

As well as being an entirely made up character.

Yes, but there HAVE been totally insane psychiatrists.

Including the one in Washington State just a few years back who was, according to his own statement, attempting to turn his patients into a zombie army so that he could rule the world.

 

[TheQuixote]

Including the one in Washington State just a few years back who was, according to his own statement, attempting to turn his patients into a zombie army so that he could rule the world.

This is a new one for me, do you have any further info on this?

 

[OldTimeRadio]

Quixote, I'm going to have to research this - since it was a news article I read several years back.

Psychiatric authorities realized that the patients of a formerly-respected psychiatrist (I believe he'd even been on the medical faculty of the University of Washington) never seemed to get better and in fact went steadily downhill.

There was a state hearing at which the psychiatrist was asked what he was doing with his patients.

"Why," the doctor responded, "I'm creating a zombie army so I can rule the world."

This was apparently said with an attitude of "why are you bothering me about so simple and obvious a matter?"

The shrink was immediately put out to pasture but the damage had of course been done. The article I read said that millions of dollars worth of lawsuits had been filed to see exactly who would pay for all the legitimate psychiatric repair work that would be neccessary to restore the Bad Doctor's patients to some semblance of normalcy.

I'll keep checking. Trust me, I didn't make this one up ('cause I simply not that good!)

 

[James_H]

There's an excellent* Colin Wilson book about people with messiah complexes. One of the stories involved a psychiatrist treating a deeply delusional patient - using a certainly avant-garde method, in which he entered into the delusion. After a while, the patient was apparently 'cured', whereas the psychiatrist had a hard time convincing himself that all the stuff about empires on mars etc was in fact not true.

*With all the usual qualifications

 

[EnolaGaia]

Quixote, I'm going to have to research this - since it was a news article I read several years back.

Psychiatric authorities realized that the patients of a formerly-respected psychiatrist ...

That sounds like the case of neuropsychiatrist Donald Dudley, who died before a trial in 2001 that awarded damages to a former patient. I can't (yet) locate a detailed review of the case, but it's mentioned in this _Guardian_ webpage:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Artic ... 58,00.html

 

[EnolaGaia]

Here's a summary account from the _Seattle Post-Intelligencer_ ...

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/dudl15ww.shtml

 

[TheQuixote]

Oh my word, that is weird... thanks EnolaGaia. OTR, I didn't doubt you! I just haven't come across this story before

 

[OldTimeRadio]

Thank you, Enola Gaia! I spent last evening trying to Google this without success, because I simply couldn't come up with the right keywords, and the psychiatrist's name continued to evade me. (The nearest I could come up with was "Donaldson.")

But I'm fairly certain the article I read actually used the word "zombie."

 

[EnolaGaia]

Thank you, Enola Gaia! I spent last evening trying to Google this without success, because I simply couldn't come up with the right keywords ...

You're quite welcome ... It was difficult to locate 'hits' on this story (even though I vaguely recalled it from the news). One reason was that the accounts (I initially found) referred to Dudley as a 'neuropsychiatrist', not a 'psychiatrist'. Another reason was that the word 'zombie' turned out to be an obstacle. There are myriad websites alluding to 'zombies' in relation to psychiatrists and medications (from that period).

I didn't record what search string(s) finally 'hit paydirt', but I believe it was a long shot using 'rule the world' (and other items I don't recall) that finally paid off.

 

[OldTimeRadio]

[T]he word 'zombie' turned out to be an obstacle. There are myriad websites alluding to 'zombies' in relation to psychiatrists and medications (from that period).

That's exactly the morass I floundered into.

 

[Ria777]

There's an excellent* Colin Wilson book about people with messiah complexes. One of the stories involved a psychiatrist treating a deeply delusional patient - using a certainly avant-garde method, in which he entered into the delusion. After a while, the patient was apparently 'cured', whereas the psychiatrist had a hard time convincing himself that all the stuff about empires on mars etc was in fact not true.

*With all the usual qualifications

that comes from an essay, "The Jet-Propelled Couch" from The Fifty-Minute Hour by Robert Lindner. Lindner also wrote Rebel Without a Cause, the book that they adapted into the the movie with James Dean.

Lindner has a client who works for a high level military secret research project. who has the same name as the main character in a science fiction stories. he begins to convince himself that the stories do describe his real life as a powerful and important person in anther world and that the stories themselves describe only part of the world, which he then elaborates upon in a series of notebooks. (this has some similarity to the latest-aired Doctor Who episodes, "Human Nature" and "The Family of Blood", by the way.)

Lindner discusses and confers with the client over minor details, at first in order to disprove them, then because he has gotten as obsessed as the client, until he half-believes in the other world. one day while Lindner goes on about some minor matter in the notebook, the client declares that he stopped believing and when he reveal that he no longer believes in the other world and pretended to do it because it pleased Lindner. Lindner then feels ashamed and admits to himself to the extent to which he has gotten pulled into the imaginary world. ever after, Lindner feels nostalgic over the notebooks and the world their represented.

though I have no hard evidence, I believe that Lindner embellished the truth a lot. the ironic way that events transpire just seem too perfectly and dramatically. actually I have trouble accepting he literally believed in his other life at all. maybe he just neglected work, had no interest in the real world any more and spent all his time scribbling his notebooks. I have even more trouble accepting that Lindner would get absorbed into the dream world to the extent that he describes.

the case seems to have insipred the Rog Phillips story "The Yellow Pill" and the Roger Zelazy novel The Dream Master.

 

[OldTimeRadio]

OTR, I didn't doubt you!

Dear lady, I was beginning to doubt myself! Especially after I couldn't Google the details. Thanks to Enola Gaia for tracking them down for me.

 

[OldTimeRadio]

There's an excellent* Colin Wilson book about people with messiah complexes. One of the stories involved a psychiatrist treating a deeply delusional patient - using a certainly avant-garde method, in which he entered into the delusion. After a while, the patient was apparently 'cured', whereas the psychiatrist had a hard time convincing himself that all the stuff about empires on mars etc was in fact not true.

*With all the usual qualifications

that comes from an essay, "The Jet-Propelled Couch" from The Fifty-Minute Hour by Robert Lindner. Lindner also wrote Rebel Without a Cause, the book that they adapted into the the movie with James Dean.

Lindner has a client who works for a high level military secret research project. who has the same name as the main character in a science fiction stories. he begins to convince himself that the stories do describe his real life as a powerful and important person in anther world and that the stories themselves describe only part of the world, which he then elaborates upon in a series of notebooks. (this has some similarity to the latest-aired Doctor Who episodes, "Human Nature" and "The Family of Blood", by the way.)

Lindner discusses and confers with the client over minor details, at first in order to disprove them, then because he has gotten as obsessed as the client, until he half-believes in the other world. one day while Lindner goes on about some minor matter in the notebook, the client declares that he stopped believing and when he reveal that he no longer believes in the other world and pretended to do it because it pleased Lindner. Lindner then feels ashamed and admits to himself to the extent to which he has gotten pulled into the imaginary world. ever after, Lindner feels nostalgic over the notebooks and the world their represented.

though I have no hard evidence, I believe that Lindner embellished the truth a lot. the ironic way that events transpire just seem too perfectly and dramatically. actually I have trouble accepting he literally believed in his other life at all. maybe he just neglected work, had no interest in the real world any more and spent all his time scribbling his notebooks. I have even more trouble accepting that Lindner would get absorbed into the dream world to the extent that he describes.

the case seems to have insipred the Rog Phillips story "The Yellow Pill" and the Roger Zelazy novel The Dream Master.

"The Jet-Propelled Couch" was dramatized live on the old PLAYHOUSE 90 television anthology series (CBS Network) around 1957. That was in fact my introduction to it.

The real name of Dr. Lindner's space-travelling patient would seem to have been "John Carter ________," since it's revealed that as an adolescent he'd devoured a then-popular series of "Martian" novels in which the name of the protagonist was identical to his first and middle names.