General psychology final project:

American Psycho-analysis

Ian Duclos

American Psycho is a film directed by Mary Harron in 2000 based on the book of the

same name. The movie portrays the life of Patrick Bateman (Christian Bale), a young in-

vestment banker whose life is centered on fine dining, his appearance and the way his

rich and shallow coworkers perceive him. Later on in the movie we start seeing psy-

chopath behaviors like him killing one of his coworkers after he had a better looking

business card than his. He starts killing more and more women and hiding them in his

dead coworker's apartment. Finally he ends up confessing everything to his lawyer ex-

pecting to get caught but he doesn't take him seriously saying that he had lunch with

that coworker some days before.

Patrick Bateman's character shows a mixture of Antisocial and Borderline personality

traits. Antisocial personality disorder consists in compulsive disregard for moral rules

and other people's rights. Borderline personality disorder on the other hand, consists in

unstable interpersonal relationships, emotions and self image. Both are Cluster B per-

sonality disorders (which often overlap) and both present impulsive behaviors.

Bateman's antisocial behavior is shown consistently throughout the movie. The most

clear evidences are all of his serial killings. He kills his coworker, a homeless man and

his dog and multiple women who didn't do anything bad to him. Most of his later killings

are impulsive and not considering any consequence. He shows compulsive lying and

gets really angry for insignificant things.

A couple of these traits are also shared with his borderline personality disorder like his

impulsive unplanned behaviors and his mood swings. Towards the end of the movie we

can reach the conclusion that he was being auto-destructive when he murdered the

other characters as he was unconsciously looking to get caught, which never happens.

His relationship with his fiancé is very unstable. He has almost no sense of identity and

his position makes him feel chronically empty as shown in one of the opening lines

where he says, "There's an idea of a Patrick Bateman; Some kind of abstraction. But

there is no real me."

Although the character fits almost perfectly to the profile of someone diagnosed as anti-

social, there are many borderline traits which are missing. The first one is fear of aban-

donment. Bateman is at no point in a position where he could be abandoned but this

feeds into his feeling of emptiness. He has no suicidal behaviors but rather wants to wit-

ness his own self destruction as a sort of climax.

In conclusion, Patrick Bateman's behaviors show a clear case of Antisocial Personality

Disorder with some Borderline traits although none of there are mentioned throughout

the movie. These were portrayed along with artistic liberties from the director and are

crucial elements in the plot of the movie.