Clockwork Orange Psychopaths

Alex from Clockwork Orange tried to rape a woman l Unpredictable and emotionally unstable

Most of the psychopaths are also depicted as unpredictable and emotionally unstable.

Nobody can tell when he is going to kill, lie, rape, or laugh. Sometimes, it becomes even difficult to tell when they are likely to commit suicide. To many psychopaths, being unpredictable is a source of power. It also helped them to enhance their manipulative skills. For example, they can tell a lie and make sure that people believe it but actually they are planning something different.

This prevents people from stopping them on their tracks because they only find out after a crime has been committed. According to Robert Genter, the artistic use of suspense makes a movie

l No sense of nervousness or psychoneurotic manifestations

According to doctor Harvey M. Cleckley, what makes psychopaths unique in most cases is their little or no sense of nervousness or psychoneurotic manifestations. In other words, psychopathic characters tend to withdraw from their immediate environments whenever they feel threatened (Genter 155). For example, after committing murder, psychopath’s may display a unique coolness that investigators may mistake for innocence. They many not show any kind of nervousness even if the situation is compelling. For example, psychopathic characters as Alex in the Clockwork Orange is not bothered even when he realizes that some of the women he raped died of shock. He maintains a unique comfort in the prison cells that causing some people believe that he is innocent. Lack of conscience among psychopaths is always driven by the belief that bad men are capable of doing what good men only dream. Therefore, they would rather live their dreams even if it makes other people suffer so much pain. l Poor in judgment and learning from experience

According to doctor Harvey M. Cleckley, the general depiction of

However, they rarely think about the negative consequences of

9

their actions. For example, in Clockwork Orange, Alex realizes that the reason why he has been arrested is that one of the women he raped has died, but before the police told him that, he didn’t notice that at all. In other words, he was not thinking at all about the negative consequences of his actions. He was not bothered about being arrested until he was incarcerated. Even Norman

Bates rarely thinks about the consequences of his actions. Perhaps, the only time he was bothered was when he realized that he had killed his mother. He could not bear the guilt and he had to exhume the body. However, even after exhuming the body and preserving it, he still continued to make conversations with her. It was such conversations that Marion Crane heard and though that

Norman’s mother was still alive. He did not realize that having the body in the house was evidence for the police or any investigating officer to realize his crimes. The inability to make good judgments is one of the reasons why many psychopaths are taken to psychiatric therapies if their actions are against laws. l Alienation from the