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Abstract
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Rubin (1999) suggests that Hitchcock seizes upon the capacity of suspense to leave the viewer in the air and then builds upon that capacity by shifting the viewer around and placing them in an ambiguous and morally confusing position. In turn, this increases their sense of vulnerability by undermining their sense of complacency. That is the view of film studies, but what about that of clinicians and teachers?
Having used some of his films to teach psychopathology to medical students and trainees, it is helpful to know which films and why. In this paper the focus is on Shadow of a Doubt (1943), where the personality disorder portrayed onscreen is that of a charming psychopath.
The term psychopathy dates to the 1800s and is derived from Greek words psycke and pathos meaning sick mind. Since then, the term has undergone many changes and its use has been inconsistent, especially in different linguistic areas. Particularly in forensic psychiatry and psychology, from the 1980s and 1990s onwards, the discussion of a concept developed by Hare (based on research by Cleckley (1941)) has gained influence (Andrade, 2008) (Crego & Widiger, 2016). Hare (1980,1982, 1991, 2003) developed his checklist to measure psychopathic characteristics and noted that pathological lying, glibness, superficial charm, lack of remorse, poor ability to develop and demonstrate empathy, and failure to accept responsibility were common features in psychopaths.
DSM 5 (APA, 2013, pp. 645-684) describes general personality disorder as an enduring pattern of inner experience and behaviour that deviates markedly from the expectations of the individual's culture and manifested in at least two of the following: cognition, affectivity, interpersonal functioning, and impulse control. The enduring pattern is inflexible, pervasive, and leads to clinically significant distress; this pattern being long and stable not related to other mental disorders or substance abuse. Hesse (2009) and Swart (2016) highlight the notions of psychopathy within the filmic context. Swart (2016) goes as far to suggest that not every psychopath is violent or a murderer but notes an unrealistic expectation that films will increase the knowledge about psychopathy. In an interesting study of over 400 films, Leistedt and Linkowski (2014) looked closely at 126 fictional psychopaths of which 105 were male and reported that secondary (51%) and prototypical (34%) were the most common in the male group whereas among 21 female psychopath portrayals, 71% showed secondary and 48% demonstrated manipulative subtypes. Hitchcock's films, and especially their depiction of psychopathology, need to be seen in the context of their period where the character portrayals were exaggerated to make a point of creating 'the other'. It needs to be emphasised that Hitchcock's works are developed from various sources and are a clear product of their time and these sources...
Language: en |