CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Lisa Spieker
In contemporary television, mental illness has taken center stage. Writers use it as a basis for character development (e.g., by allowing characters to overcome limitations associated with their illness) as well as motivation for dramatic plot elements (such as a worsening condition or romantic rejections of the afflicted characters due to their illness). However, in some cases mental illness is written in such a way that it professionally enables the characters who suffer from it to such a degree that it is turned into a veritable superpower: protagonists no longer seem to succeed professionally despite their various mood-, obsessive-compulsive-, or personality disorders but because of them.
Western culture’s fascination with mental illness is not a recent development and neither is the association of mental illness with heightened creativity or genius. Socrates was quoted by Plato to have said that “madness, provided it comes as the gift of heaven, is the channel by which we receive the greatest blessings, madness is a nobler thing than sober sense … madness comes from God, whereas sober sense is merely human.”1 Touched with divine fire, artists were liberated from the limitations of custom and convention and were capable of great feats of creativity.2 Over time this understanding of mental illness was discarded in favor of other discourses that saw mental illness alternately as a form of divine punishment, demonic possession, or the result of one’s own moral transgressions. The conflation of mental illnesses and creativity or genius was picked up again during the Renaissance and the romantic era when being called “mad” became a point of pride for artists and melancholia in particular was said to heighten the poet’s creativity.3
These days the stance towards the mentally ill seems to oscillate between fear, stigmatization, or ridicule on the one hand and fascination or even romanticization on the other.4 I suggest that these vacillations between stigmatization and romanticization are mirrored in cultural products such as television shows. Popular contemporary television shows can express deep-seated cultural beliefs about the nature of disorders of the mind and allow us to gauge which aspects or interpretations the general audience wants to engage with. Even though there are several other shows that feature mentally ill characters, this paper will only focus on Adrian Monk (played by Tony Shalhoub) in Monk, Gregory House (Hugh Laurie) in House, M.D., Dexter Morgan (Michael C. Hall) in Dexter and Will Graham (Hugh Dancy) in Hannibal. I hope to show how these shows present mental illness as the basis of their protagonists’ success and discuss what the popularity of the trope may signify about the contemporary stance towards mental illness in Western culture.
Adrian Monk, the “defective detective”5 and star of the police procedural / sitcom that bears his name, suffers from a severe case of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). Most of his OCD-related behavior presents itself in the categories of cleaning, ordering, checking, and counting compulsions, as well as obsessive worries about having left on the oven or about losing personal items like keys. He also admits to having more than 300 phobias. Some of his phobias are very common, such as fear of heights, needles, snakes, germs, or crowds, whereas others are rather unusual, such as his fear of milk. While many of these symptoms are highly debilitating—in many instances Monk cannot arrest fleeing suspects or criminals because he finds himself paralyzed by his fear of heights6 or germs7—others constitute the basis of his prowess as a detective. Adrian Monk’s obsession with cleanliness and symmetry enables him to notice minute clues that escape his colleagues’ attention, which ultimately leads him to solving the case. In a scene reminiscent of Sherlock Holmes’s meticulous analyses of crime scenes, Monk infers—to the incredulity of other police investigators—that they are looking at a premeditated murder rather than a burglary gone sour as the perpetrator had waited for his victim at least an hour. Like Holmes, who could famously distinguish brands of cigars based on the ashes8 or notice small idiosyncrasies of typewriters,9 Adrian Monk possesses extraordinarily acute senses and can sniff out the brand of cigarettes which the perpetrator smoked while he waited. Monk also has an eidetic memory10 that enables him to reconstruct crime scenes to the last detail. Both the acuteness of his senses and observations as well as his flawless memory are depicted as traits connected to his OCD: throughout the entire series, Monk’s brilliant observations and reasoning are interrupted by compulsive gestures (e.g., touching lamps) and anxious questions concerning topics of his obsessive worrying or similar behavior. This direct juxtaposition of socially sanctioned and pathological behavior is not only exploited as a basis for the series’ jokes but also suggests a connection. The link is further emphasized by scenes in which Monk’s constant scanning of the environment for things that could cause him distress leads to his discovery of vital cues as well as his repeated assertion that his ability to notice and remember so much is “a gift … and a curse.”11 While one could argue that Monk’s catchphrase is merely a reference to the hardships of an excessive ability to remember minutiae rather than his obsessive-compulsive disorder, a therapist he sees briefly further stresses the connection between his OCD and his detective skills: he suggests that Monk uses his analytical powers as a prop to avoid dealing with his “real problems.”12 In other words, his unique focus on the irregularities of the crime scene or case at hand are born out of Monk’s need to cope with his generalized anxiety and his wife’s violent death, just as his obsessions and compulsions are. The ninth episode in the third season drives the connection home: frustrated by his recurrent inability to fill out the role of police officer completely, Monk gives in to his psychiatrist’s urging and starts to take an experimental drug to reduce the symptoms of his OCD. While Monk does feel more at ease and no longer suffers from his obsessions, compulsions, or phobias, he also loses his crime-fighting superpowers along with his ability to read social cues or even care about the case he is working on.13 Convinced that he cannot have the gift without the curse, he finally stops taking the pills and becomes his obsessive-compulsive and brilliant self again.
Another figure in contemporary television with exceptional analytical powers and a severe mental illness is Doctor Gregory House. He suffers from recurrent depressive episodes, is addicted to Vicodin, and has alternately been diagnosed with narcissistic personality disorder or “sociopathy.”14 The latter two are ascribed to him because of his disregard for the feelings of others, egocentrism, difficulty in maintaining mutually intimate relationships, the fact that his self-esteem is based on his intellectual and diagnostic success, his narcissistic need for admiration, self-aggrandizement, manipulativeness, and failure to follow hospital rules and laws.15 Despite these conditions, House mostly remains a high-functioning medical doctor and brilliant diagnostician who can solve the most baffling cases. While these disorders severely disable House personally and socially—over the course of the show he was fired,16 incarcerated,17 committed to a mental hospital,18 on the brink of death,19 and repeatedly alienated even his most indulgent friends and fellow doctors—they also constitute the basis for his diagnostic success: When House says that he became a doctor to treat illnesses, not patients,20 he means it. To him, patients are diagnostic puzzles to be solved rather than human beings in need of help. As puzzles, they provide interesting intellectual challenges and opportunities to prove his diagnostic superiority over other doctors. Thus, finding a treatment or cure for the patient is not the goal but rather a test of his diagnostic endeavors: “if the treatment works, he can know for sure that his diagnosis was correct.”21 House’s focus on an impersonal challenge rather than the patient at hand makes for his abysmal bedside manner but it also explains his extraordinary tenacity and drive. Exactly because he uses cases to satisfy his narcissistic need for admiration and to support his instable sense of self-worth,22 finding the correct diagnosis is of intense personal importance to House and motivates him, time and again, to do whatever it takes. “Whatever it takes” includes manipulating his team and superiors, threatening, mocking, and deceiving patients and their families in order to get them to agree to risky or experimental treatment, and coercing his team into breaking into their patients’ houses to gather clues, all of which match the diagnostic criteria of narcissistic and antisocial personality disorder, respectively.23 House’s willingness to overstep legal, ethical, and social rules usually ends up saving his patients, so his more benevolent fellow doctors see his actions as House’s idiosyncratic and overbearing way to act in the patient’s best interests. Patients generally come to House and his team when other doctors are stumped for answers, making House both a last resort and his actions a necessary evil. It needs to be pointed out, though, that House does not restrict this antisocial behavior to getting ahead in his cases. He constantly manipulates, cheats, lies, and breaks rules in order to get what he wants—regardless of whether this means winning a bet with a friend, antagonizing his superiors, or acquiring drugs.
Even though House also seems to delight in breaking the rules for the fun of it, he also suffers from his inability to foster and maintain the mutually intimate personal relationships he craves.24 Yet, like Adrian Monk, House essentially must remain his disordered self. Like Monk, House believes that a more ordinary way of relating to the world may lead to more happiness but is ultimately incompatible with his unique analytical gift. Unlike Monk, who seems to choose a life with obsessions, compulsions, and phobias out of a sense of duty as a police officer, House has less altruistic reasons; for him it is better to possess unique talents and be unhappy than to be normal and content.25
Dexter Morgan, blood splatter analyst by day, serial killer by night, would trade his deviations for normalcy in an instant; having been traumatized at a very young age, he is, by his own account, incapable of relating to others and even of experiencing the full range of human emotions. In frequent monologues, he agonizes over his alienation from society, the performative quality of all his interactions, wonders what it would be like to truly feel happiness or sadness, and considers his secret lust for violence.26 Because of these traits, Dexter Morgan has been diagnosed with sociopathy–or rather, antisocial personality disorder (ASPD).27
Dexter Morgan is no ordinary serial killer: He kills only those who “truly deserve to die.” Because his adoptive father, Harry, noticed Dexter’s violent and anti-social tendencies early, he developed a plan to both stop his son from spending his life in jail and to “harness [Dexter’s] violence toward some form of justice.”28 Harry insisted that Dexter needs to follow a “code” whenever he gives in to “his dark passenger”: he can only kill those who are guilty of violent crimes and either escaped punishment or remained unredeemed and thus still constitute a danger to society. As a result, Dexter carefully vets all his victims to ensure they fit the code, and kills in a ritualistic and antiseptic fashion that “echo[es] the US’ ‘medicalized’ death penalty practices.”29 Both Dexter and Harry consider Dexter’s actions a corrective to a legal system that cannot always protect citizens from violence as well as it should due to bureaucratic loopholes or human fallibility. Dexter and his killing therefore become necessary evils in that they break the law to better serve the law’s purpose, which is protecting the innocent.30 Dexter’s ASPD and his disconnection from others in combination with Harry’s code as moral compass make Dexter the ultimate vigilante: he is unencumbered by emotions that could blur his judgement, untouched by the violence he commits yet in control of his bloodlust, isolated enough to freely give in to his violent urges, and a masterful manipulator and liar who (for the most part) manages to hide his double life from his coworkers at the Miami PD and his family. Problems only arise when Dexter becomes increasingly attached to others, such as his girlfriend Rita and their children, because it makes him vulnerable to threats by other killers and causes him to make mistakes due to a lack of sleep and focus.31
FBI special agent Will Graham in Hannibal, a crime drama/psychological thriller, suffers from an “empathy disorder.” No such condition exists in real life, but the audience quickly understands that Will Graham can empathize with anyone, cognitively and emotionally. His character represents pure empathy, i.e., the logical opposite to the concept of “sociopathy.” As a profiler, Will Graham needs to empathize with serial killers in order to reconstruct their thinking and methods. While his disorder enables him to provide insights so keen that they seem to be based on mind reading rather than the human faculty to take other perspectives, it becomes clear that it also takes its toll: over the course of the first season Will Graham becomes increasingly unstable because he cannot shield himself from the thoughts, associations, and emotions of the serial killers he investigates. Without “forts in the bone area of his skull”32 that keep the grotesque yet aestheticized acts of violence at bay, he is forced to share serial killers’ emotions and thoughts as if they were his own. His sense of self becomes increasingly elusive and unstable until he (almost) cannot tell anymore whether he has turned into a serial killer himself. Unlike the characters discussed previously, Will Graham has a condition that is entirely fictional, yet it illustrates the mythologization of mental illness and the diffuse way in which it is used to explain superhuman abilities.
Considering the reasons for the rise of sociopathic yet hypersuccessful characters, Adam Kotsko argues that television has created its own version of sociopathy that departs from the clinical definition in several ways and only retains the most enabling and mythical attributes: according to Kotsko “the fantasy sociopath is somehow outside social norms—largely bereft of human sympathy … and generally amoral—and yet is simultaneously a master manipulator, who can instrumentalize social norms to get what he or she wants.”33 Unlike real life sociopaths, Gregory House and Dexter Morgan are at times able to empathize, forge and maintain personal relationships, or even care deeply for others. House has a close friend in his fellow doctor James Wilson and an admittedly unstable romantic relationship with his supervisor. Dexter cares for his sister Debra, his son, and his girlfriends. Despite their severe problems to relate, show their true selves or trust others, they gradually overcome some of the interpersonal limitations associated with their condition over the course of the show—without much therapy to speak of. Endowed with a lack of moral intuition and empathy, yet free from extreme impulsivity, or the incapacity to experience mutually intimate relationships, the fantasy sociopath is enabled to function professionally on superhuman levels, whereas real people with ASPD face severe impairments in personality and interpersonal functioning.34
Building on Kotsko, I suggest that contemporary television has not only constructed a fantasy sociopath but is in the process of creating an entire fantasy psychopathology. There are several possible explanations for this phenomenon. Kotsko suggests that the immense popularity of fantasy sociopaths is related to a profound cultural unease. According to him, “the average person” is painfully aware of the problems that arise from an attachment to social norms as well as the way those norms are successfully exploited or ignored by “the people who run our world.”35 The average person then projects the opposite of their limitations onto their “conquerors”—which gave rise to the figure of the fantasy sociopath and its intense popularity in contemporary television.36
While I agree with Kotsko that there seems to be a demand for larger than life characters that possess incredible skills—a fascination also expressed in Western culture’s current interest in superheroes and supervillains—his explanation cannot account for the general rise of characters with mental illnesses other than ASPD. I therefore propose that the conflation of (analytic) genius and mental illness as well as the creation of a fantasy psychopathology can be explained by the two opposing reactions to mental illness in Western culture: fascination and stigmatization. I further suggest that these positions are not as contradictory as they might seem. In his seminal work on stigma, Erving Goffman states that in order to facilitate interactions with strangers and to reduce the cognitive effort required by these encounters, we as a society have developed means of categorizing people and established assumptions according to which attributes are “ordinary and normal for members of each of these categories.”37 Furthermore, we have expectations concerning the types of people we are likely to meet in specific settings. Based on a person’s appearance, the setting of the encounter, and the resulting normative expectations on how the individual in question ought to be, we form a working hypothesis on a stranger’s social identity, which Goffman called “virtual social identity.”38 A person’s virtual social identity includes not only personal attributes such as creativity but also structural ones such as occupation. If an individual differs in one or several attributes from other members of the category available to him/her and if the aspects in which he/she deviates are found to be less desirable, these attributes constitute a stigma. Regardless of other positive traits, an individual is then “reduced in our minds from a whole and usual person to a tainted, discounted one”39 and in the most extreme cases considered to be “not quite human.”40 Mental illness, despite the efforts and successes of various advocacy groups, still constitutes a stigma. Goffman further claims that “[w]e tend to impute a wide range of imperfections on the basis of the original one.”41 For example, in the case of anorexia nervosa, one of the additional imperfections commonly ascribed is narcissism; in the case of depression it is weak will based on the assumption that depressed persons could pull themselves together if they really wanted to. However, in some cases we tend to simultaneously “impute some desirable but undesired attributes, often of a supernatural cast, such as ‘sixth sense,’ or ‘understanding.’”42 Goffman cites the example of blind people, who are sometimes assumed to be great judges of character, as if their impairment allowed them to draw on “special channels of information un-available to others.”43 Likewise, the superhuman abilities of perception, memory, analytical genius, empathy, or manipulation are ascribed on the basis of the characters’ original stigma, their mental illness. However, it should be kept in mind that all characters discussed here are enabled professionally by their conditions, yet ultimately miserable. The only way they can achieve happiness is by learning to overcome their disorder, which frequently involves relating emotionally to “normals,”44 i.e., nonstigmatized or healthy individuals, and often results in a decline of their special powers. The making of mental illness that can currently be found in television therefore simultaneously allows for an increased visibility of disorders of the mind in public discourse and puts forth a romanticized and even positively mythological view on them but also stresses the characters’ isolation, unhappiness, or even his/her failure to be a “full human being,”45 that is capable to experience the entire range of emotions.
Notes
1. Plato, Phaedrus and the Seventh and Eighth Letters, trans. Walter Hamilton (Middlesex: Penguin, 1974), 46–47.
2. Plato, Phaedrus, 68.
3. Roy Porter, Madness: A Brief History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 65–83.
4. See also Porter, Madness, 65–83; M. C. Angermeyer and H. Matschinger, “The Stigma of Mental Illness: Effects of Labeling on Public Attitudes towards People with Mental Disorder,” Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavia 108 (2003): 304–309.
5. Monk, “Mr. Monk and the Candidate,” dir. Dean Parisot, written by Andy Breckman, USA Cable Entertainment, July 12, 2002.
6. Ibid.
7. Monk, “Mr. Monk Takes His Medicine” dir. Randall Zisk, written by Tom Scharpling and Chuck Sklar, NBC, August 20, 2004.
8. See Arthur Conan Doyle, A Study in Scarlet (London: Ward Lock & Co., 1888); Arthur Conan Doyle, The Hound of the Baskervilles (London: George Newnes Ltd., 1902).
9. Arthur Conan Doyle, “A Case of Identity,” in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1892), 56–75.
10. Interestingly, Sheldon Cooper (played by Jim Parsons) on CBS’s The Big Bang Theory is another highly intelligent fictional who has OCD and an eidetic memory. With him, however, the connection between these two conditions is never made explicit.
11. Monk, “Mr. Monk Goes to the Carnival,” dir. Randall Zisk, written by Siobhan Byrne, ABC, August 2, 2002.
12. Monk, “Mr. Monk Goes to the Asylum,” dir. Nick Marck, written by Tom Scharpling and David Breckman, USA Cable Entertainment, August 9, 2002.
13. Monk, “Mr. Monk Takes His Medicine.”
14. While both the depressive episodes and the addiction to Vicodin are thematized in the show itself, the diagnosis of either a narcissistic personality disorder or sociopathy can only be found in secondary literature.
15. See Mark Alicke, “House and Narcissism: Why Are Flawed Heroes Simply Irresistible?” in House and Psychology: Humanity is Overrated, ed. Ted Cascio and Leonard L. Martin (Hoboken: John Wiley and Sons, 2011), 143; Adam Kotsko, Why We Love Sociopaths: A Guide to Late Capitalist Television (Winchester, UK: Zero Books, 2012), 2. Henceforth, the clinically more accurate term “antisocial personality disorder” will be used to refer to what Kotsko calls sociopathy.
16. House, “Both Sides Now,” dir. Greg Yaitanes, written by Doris Egan, Fox, May 11, 2009.
17. House, “Que Sera Sera,” dir. Deran Sarafian, written by Thomas L. Moran, Fox, November 7, 2006.
18. House, “Broken (Part One and Two),” dir. Katie Jacobs, written by Russel Friend, Garrett Lerner, David Foster, and David Shore, Fox, September 21, 2009.
19. House, “The Softer Side,” dir. Deran Sarafian, written by Liz Friedman, Fox, February 23, 2009.
20. House, “Pilot: Everybody Lies,” dir. Bryan Singer, written by David Shore, Fox, November 16, 2004.
21. Kotsko, Sociopaths, 90.
22. For a more detailed discussion of House’s sense of self-worth see Kotsko, Sociopaths, 84–93, and Alicke, “Narcissism,” 143–151.
23. American Psychiatric Association, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th ed. (Washington, DC and London: American Psychiatric Publishing, 2013).
24. His neediness is frequently commented upon both by other characters—his supervisor and sometime romantic partner Lisa Cuddy calls him the “long-distance runner of neediness”—and by House himself. See House, “Don’t Ever Change,” dir. Deran Sarafian, written by Doris Egan and Leonard Dick, Fox, February 5, 2008, and House, “Birthmarks,” dir. David Platt, written by Doris Egan and David Foster, Fox, October 14, 2008.
25. See Kotsko, Sociopaths, 92.
26. For a more detailed analysis of Dexter Morgan’s ruminations about his feelings, appropriate emotional reactions, and the way he fakes them, see Bella Depaulo, ed., The Psychology of Dexter (Dallas: Benbella Books, 2010).
27. To cite just one example: Adi Jaffe, “The Killer Within,” in The Psychology of Dexter, ed. Bella Depaulo (Dallas: Benbella Books, 2010), 147–154.
28. Kotsko, Sociopaths, 83.
29. Kotsko, Sociopaths, 84.
30. Cf. Kotsko, Sociopaths, 85.
31. Dexter, “Living the Dream,” dir. Marcos Siega, written by Clyde Phillips, Showtime, September 27, 2009.
32. Hannibal, “Apéritif,” dir. David Slade, written by Bryan Fuller, NBC, April 4, 2013.
33. Kotsko, Sociopaths, 2.
34. Ibid.
35. Kotsko, Sociopaths, 7–8.
36. Kotsko, Sociopaths, 7.
37. Erving Goffman, Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity (New York: Touchstone, 1986), 2.
38. Ibid.
39. Goffman, Stigma, 3.
40. Goffman, Stigma, 5.
41. Goffman, Stigma, 14.
42. Goffman, Stigma, 14–15.
43. Goffman, Stigma, 15.
44. Goffman, Stigma, 16.
45. Kotsko, Sociopaths, 10.