The Bateman File

Well, it was a long time in the process, but I have finished an analysis for Patrick Bateman from Brett Easton Ellis’ American Psycho. This was a paper written for my psychology of personality course.

The goal was to examine a real or fictional person from two competing personality perspectives of the eight that we covered in our coursework and reading. I chose to look at Bateman in three ways. The first is to describe his personality more fully from an abnormal point of view using schizotypal and borderline personality disorders. I then did a more detailed theoretical analysis using general psychoanalytic theory and then using a novel application of self-actualization from humanistic psychology.

I just reformatted the paper to appear in a more journal like format, and is hopefully a bit easier to read using two columns and with single spacing.

Read it here: BatemanReformatted.pdf

This paper is my first major work for my PhD program in Clinical Psychology through Walden University. I have written plenty of other papers, but this is the first that really let me dive into theory and produce work that was an original synthesis of other research. Overall, because it was a paper for a class with some specific requirements, it straddles the line between giving extra description of theories to demonstrate understanding and also in using jargon from both the psychology and literary fields. So it might seem to drag in some areas and then plow through others. But, hopefully it will be a decent read overall.