Friday, October 23, 2009

Glenn Close: Sociopaths must be stopped

This is paraphrased and taken out of context, but yes, Glenn Close pretty much says that in her blog about mental illness in the Huffington Post:
There are some notable exceptions, of course -- Dustin Hoffman in Rainman, or Russell Crowe's portrayal of John Nash in A Beautiful Mind. But more often than not, the movie or TV version of someone suffering from a mental disorder is a sociopath who must be stopped.
I get it Glenn. If they are bipolar or schizoaffective or have whatever other disorder that someone in your family has, they are fine. If the disorder was portrayed by a lovable Hollywood favorite or the portrayal ends up winning an Oscar, it is fine. But sociopaths must be stopped.

On a positive note, sociopaths seem to be getting more press than usual recently (excluding news about the Bush administration, of course).

21 comments:

  1. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  2. by the way, i just read your "not superior but different" rant and i agree. and i was the one fucking with you.

    kudos.

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  4. I enjoy the wholly different motivations and behaviors of the 'mentally ill' in movies if done well. Explicit sociopaths are or were until this decade a relatively underused group, but I'd love to see more accurate explorations of a greater verity of mental illnesses. Then again the media hasn't got 'normal' people down yet.

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  5. Sociopaths are like rabid dogs. At this time there's no cure so I think it would be best to seek special circumstances on crimes like murder to put them down, and seek life imprisonment if they commit other crimes. At least until they find a cure for this destructive disease.

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  6. Dafty, you forget how naked you are.

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  7. (Mentally. Because things need to be spelled out for you.)

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  8. thats strange that youd think of daft naked -- mentally or otherwise.

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  9. Mentally ill people are frequently portrayed with sociopathic tendencies, wreaking havoc and chaos, clearly needing to be stopped for one reason or another.

    Reading too much into her comment is fucking idiotic. It reminds me of comments made by some members of a certain race of people who like to cry racism so often that you just can't take them seriously, even when it's real.

    WTF M.E.?

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  10. The "sociopath" is tailor made for hollywood. A person who has "no conscious" is exempt from normal motivations - screenwriters can have this person do anything, so they make fantastic villains.

    The reality is neither as glamorous or shocking as a Hollywood movie. Most people with ASPD are just trying to get along in the world, sometimes they turn to crime/violence because they can't find a suitable alternative to get what they need/want. These crimes should be treated like . . . *gasp* crimes.

    Psychology is not even a real science. Terms like 'sociopath' or 'psychopath' have more literary than medical or legal significance. So I think the demonic 'sociopath' will most likely continue to have a greater role in hollywood than the judicial system.

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  11. Terms like 'sociopath' or 'psychopath' have more literary than medical or legal significance.

    Agreed. It's not so much a slight to only call the crazy-crazies 'sociopathic' and the socially accepted (or even elected) crazies by another name, it's just the vernacular the label has been absorbed into. It doesn't make it true that one sociopath is more sociopathic than another...it just makes one more interesting to bring up in the news/movies/beauty parlor gossip - thereby dominating pubic awareness and perception. Sociopath might as well be defined as 'evil' or 'clinically unlikable' at this stage.

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  12. @ Harry Lime

    They're not trying to get along. I've seen a pretty convincing argument that psychopathy is an evolutionary adaptation to a cheating strategy at life.
    google Linda Mealey and sociobiology of sociopathy if you want to look at it.

    Doesn't matter what Hollywood craps. People with no conscience live among us, and most of the time, they don't try to be nice.

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  13. Anon said: "psychopathy is an evolutionary adaptation to a cheating strategy at life."

    This doesn't make any sense -- "life" or natural selection doesn't have a moral component. It's not possible to cheat because there aren't any rules.

    A community of humans may create rules to limit certain 'life strategies', but this is a peripheral development to evolution which may sometimes reward the very same strategies.

    And I didn't say anyone was being nice, only that many people with tendencies will be able to avoid conviction of a felony. If they can accomplish this, then they're just like every other free person in the US.

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  14. @Anon

    Why do you think a conscience will prevent victimization? People who are a slave to their conscience can accomplish just as much destruction as any other. It's a matter of values - and thats adopted on the community scale.

    And if you want to get technical about it, social subjectivity is an empath mechanism. The car bomb that just went off in Iraq and killed over 100 people was more likely planted by an empath following his conscious than a sociopath following his own end.

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  15. Sarah saind, "The car bomb that just went off in Iraq and killed over 100 people was more likely planted by an empath following his conscious than a sociopath following his own end."

    Excellent point.

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  17. Perhaps Glenn Close really needs to read the current DSM and use a well-defined term like ASPD when describing fictional characters who persistantly violate the rights of others and really need to be stopped.

    -- lurker

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  18. P.S.
    Glenn Close does not offer an opinion on how society ought or ought not treat individuals who claim to have significant sociopathic personality tendancies and have not been diagnosed with any mental illness.

    "the movie or TV version of someone suffering from a mental disorder is a sociopath who must be stopped"

    This is not the same as saying "in TV or movies, someone who must be stopped is always a sociopaths", or even "in TV or movies, all sociopaths must be stopped". On the face of it, the statement doesn't even imply that Glenn Close agrees with the TV and movie portrayal of sociopathy or mental illness. The purpose of the Huffington Post article seems to be to express her opinion that people should be more frank in discussing mental illness, and stop marginalizing the mentally ill.

    --lurker

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  19. Ladies and Gentlemen, Glenn Close.

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  20. i could be mistaken, but i thought i read in the book "i hate you, don't leave me" that glenn close's character in 'fatal attraction' is likely a borderline.

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