Creature Frankenstein: a study on antisocial personality disorder

Abstract

This paper consists of a behavioral analysis of the monster in the book “Frankenstein: Or, the Modern Prometheus” written by Mary Shelley. As a fictional character, data provided by the author are used for the analysis. The purpose of the study is to answer two questions, “Could the creature be considered as either a psychopath or a sociopath?” and “Can the creature be diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder?”. As a context for the readers, a summary of the story was included in this paper. The main tools used in this paper to answer both questions are the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders or DSM-5 regarding the antisocial personality disorder and the Hare Psychopathy Checklist - Revised or PCL-R, both tools have several criteria to assess a correct diagnosis. And as such, some adjustments were deemed necessary before using the tools, which are highly effective when used by trained professionals. Furthermore, the methodology used in this study is divided into three parts. The first part used the used the DSM-5 criteria to answer the second main question, the second part assessed whether the creature could be considered a psychopath using the PCL-R methodology. And the third part consisted of a collection of 20 excerpts taken from the source material to work as a direct form of analysis by identifying psychopathic and sociopathic traits directly from the book using the theoretical literature collected for this paper. The results were not completely successful as the only method that obtained a positive response was the first one. The second method failed to obtain the same success by a good margin. Finally, the third method was rendered insufficient by itself, but it showed valuable evidence to corroborate with both hypotheses (questions) showing that the monster presented traces of psychopathy and sociopathy.