“I simply am not there”

Dissecting the man who dissects girls.
American Psycho.


“There is an idea of a Patrick Bateman, some kind of abstraction. But there is no real me, only an entity, something illusory. Although I can hide my cold gaze and you can shake my hand and feel flesh gripping yours, and maybe you can even sense our lifestyles are probably comparable. I simply am not there.” (Mary Harron.)

Patrick Bateman portrays himself as the ultimate pleasure seeker, a man that has it all. “The libido has been withdrawn from the external world, has been directed to the ego and thus gives rise to an attitude which may be called narcissism” (Freud, 1925).

How can narcissism be defined in this character? Bateman is a perfectionist, a man without a visible flaw; every detail in his routine is planned perfectly. He has a strict schedule, which has helped him as a defense. In other words, his physique is his own defense.

He uses his body to soothe his inner pain, but in the inside there is a void, an empty space without any emotional content. He speaks about not being in touch with his own emotions, being inhuman or unable to feel. “I have all the characteristics of a human being: blood, flesh, skin, hair; but not a single, clear, identifiable emotion, except for greed and disgust.

"Something horrible is happening inside of me and I don't know why. My nightly bloodlust has overflown into my days. I feel lethal, on the verge of frenzy. I think my mask of sanity is about to slip.” (Mary Harron).

He is tormented on the inside but stands out as a very strong, intellectual reliable narrator. He uses some prefabricated phrases in his own speech, which are not his own thoughts or words, he picks them up from outside, like the newspaper, radio show or magazines.

Although when someone interrupts him he loses track and his inner thoughts like “murders and excecutions” instead of “mergers and adquisistions” come into surface. “There then was the patient’s suppressed aggression, the most extreme manifestation of which had thus far been his death wishes” (Reich, 1919).

When someone asks Bateman what are some important subjects that people should be worried about he responds “Well, we have to end apartheid for one. And slow down the nuclear arms race, stop terrorism and world hunger. We have to provide food and shelter for the homeless, and oppose racial discrimination and promote civil rights, while also promoting equal rights for women. We have to encourage a return to traditional moral values. Most importantly, we have to promote general social concern and less materialism in young people.” (Mary Harron)

All this discourse is empty, filled with lifeless interactions with people but ironically what is secretly being discussed is his own hate. For example “homeless, racial discrimination and equal right for women” are three subjects that eventually he destroys.

He is part of this social hierarchy of New York City, maybe a metaphor for his own megalomania and omnipotence. He hates minorities, homosexuals, poor/homeless people and women especially with some power. He introjects all his hate and in his speech he uses a reaction formation defense to present himself as this correct and centered person.

“In these patients there’s a most pronounced narcissism, emphasizing the hostility and defiance hidden behind an apparent eagerness to cooperate” (Rosenfeld, 1971).

With this type of comments he preserves a status, being on top of his other colleague who are all racists and misogynistic, Bateman in public acts carefully so he won’t stain his appearance.

What is the symbolic meaning of this characters he hates?

Paul Allen is one of Bateman’s coworker in B&B who is a big threat for him. He is the manager of the most lucrative account there is, a bright, young, handsome man who is the first character to visibly reject Bateman, by mistaking him for another associate in the firm and the only way Bateman can be near him is to pretend he is the other character.

“This identification is connected with fantasies of replacing an admired object in order to profit therefrom by taking over the admired person’s rights and properties” (Brenner, 1974).

He feels powerless and vulnerable when Paul Allen is in the room, regressing to his own infantile development, this “power figure” represents a very punitive, strong, restrictive character; his father.

“The essential task confronting such narcissistically tainted personalities is that of maintaining and restoring the infantile self esteem which derives from the reunion of a grandiose self–representation with and omnipotent object representation” (Rochlin, 1973).

This may be the primary source of his break with reality, there is a conflict between needing some affiliation to give life definition and also rebel from this predetermined life by his father’s choice. He feels he doesn’t own his life and can’t quit his job because as he says “I want to fit in”, there is a clear rejection not only from Paul Allen but also from his first object of love.

“Projection and distortions of reality follow upon this process which support the patient’s embattled sense of self and self-esteem, justify his rage and hostility, and allow him to maintain these affects in support of inner narcissistic needs” (Meissner, 1979).

Another objects he tries to exterminate are women, his relationship with women lack affect. He is resistant in being with only one person, a clear fear of being in symbiosis with his first love object and therefore abandoned afterwards. Women are the desired object but also another threat for Bateman, they are the antithesis of success and power. He manipulates women in order to make them become just an object, an emotionless being, and an accessory that fits in his life of appearances.

Women are disposable for Bateman, there’s just one object he’s directing this behavior to: his first love object. He commits violent and sexual acts in the same way, by constantly replicating the horror of his own castration. He has a fragmented idea of a woman, not entirely joined, a woman represents the “lack of’. These women are terminated by savage aggressions, using a phallic device in order to destroy by an overcompensation of his own male impotence.

“Aggression is a failure to fit between the child’s need for absolute dependence and the response of the mother, hatred serving as a barrier to protect the ego from ‘people who do not love us’” (Fonagy et al., 1993).

He has intercourse with women in a very stereotyped way, he masters the process, he even styles himself and looks at the mirror while having sex with them, a clear narcissistic focus on image (his own) and a superficial intercourse.

He degrades and devaluate women to the point that he not only kills them violently during sex but also dissects them and finally eats their remains. This is a maladaptive need to introject an object into the self. Just as a person in love wishing to become part of his lover.

“There may, in addition, be specific narcissistic dynamics that are played out in the interactions of projection and introjection themselves, over and above their reference to the objectives of self preservation” (Meissner, 1979).

This is a way for him to feel preserved and contained over the terrifying loss of an object, he releases tension by being sexually potent, misogynistic, impulsive and powerful over his victims.

“There’s a constant struggle between an irrepressible urge to destroy their objects and a desire to preserve them” (Klein, 1958).

Bateman has a fragmented ego, a lack of balance between these three structures; ego, superego and id. There is vagueness between fantasy and reality; he doesn’t consider himself real and complete.
“There is an idea of a Patrick Bateman, some kind of abstraction, but there is no real me, only an entity, something illusory” (Mary Harron).

He understands his inappropriate behavior and observes reality, but can’t be inside it, he can’t control himself. There is a strong disinhibition of the id, filled with depraved fantasies and sadistic violence, in this way he releases all his tension by destroying others.

While he loses a connection with reality the id becomes more noticeable. “The most primitive patients, functioning on a pre-self level, maintain hallucinations that promise discharge” (Meadow, 1989).

Patrick Bateman is a man that is devoted to get rewards from external things, money, power, fame, status and recognition. He is surrounded in the world of finance; this environment is controlling, overpowering and hyper-masculine, where presentation is the most important part of a name and therefore; success. All his energy is encapsulated in his own business card; this small paper with ink is what embellishes his persona.

His own rules aren’t differentiated from stock market rules; eliminating the enemy is his priority. Killing the other who may be more powerful is what keeps Bateman satisfied.
“My need to engage in homicidal behavior on a massive scale cannot be corrected but, uh, I have no other way to fulfill my needs.” (Mary Harron).

Bateman’s identity throughout the whole movie is unclear; he is repeatedly recognized as someone else, this may represent his own inability to know who he is. He acts aggressively towards others who threaten his inner psyche and make him feel vulnerable and shameful.

“The patient is plagued by the negative narcissistic qualities of a sense of humiliation, embarrassment and mortification” (Meissner, 1979).

Bateman imagines doing and saying violent things to people throughout the whole movie but in reality he doesn’t; it’s all in his mind. So this fantasy might be a narcissistic defense, projection as a defense mechanism takes on its character as it “reinforces and preserves the sense of grandiose entitlement around which the pathological sense of self sustains itself. (Meissner, 1979).

Patrick Bateman has built a protecting cover between his own self and the terrible truth of his own reality. This mask is, one the one hand, his acquired hallucinatory identity as a serial murderer, and, on the other, the perfect appearance as a Wall Street banker. This two different identities function as a cover to Bateman and as an opposite magnet between two forces: the identity of a serial murderer personifies what the other refuses to accept in society.

“The grandiosity serves to mask and counter there underlying negative narcissistic components” (Meissner, 1979). This is why there is so much anxiety; one’s identity causes the other to live with fear of his own existence.

Bateman begins to be immersed more and more into insanity, his own hallucinations start to slip and his own self begins to disappear. “At the grossest and most distorted level of psychotic grandiosity, which is so frequently a dimension of paranoid thinking, the grandiose delusion one possesses special powers, is transparently compensatory and serves to redress the narcissistic imbalance reflected in feelings of worthlessness, vulnerability, weakness and inadequacy” (Meissner, 1979). When he realizes that he isn’t a serial killer, his whole identity that has projected onto the external world vanishes and his whole structure collapses.

Patrick Bateman invests most of his time and effort in improving his self-image, feeling compenstated for his underlying feelings or worthlessness. There is an unbalance in the dual force system, it seems like his own repetition compulsion is similar to what Freud (1920) explains at this “existence of a force in human nature that operates against the pleasure principle and its imperatives of human self-preservation and gratification.” In other words; death drive.

There are some formulations relating drives and primary processes that fit perfectly into Bateman’s character. “The tendency to immediate gratification (discharge of cathexis can be shifted from it’s original object in the event that these are blocked or innaccesible and can instead be discharged by a similar, or even by a rather different route.” (Freud, 1974).

Bateman portrays a person who is incapable of any delayed gratification, his urge to conceive satisfaction is so predominant that he can’t wait until an actual discharge, he has to immerse himself into his own fantasy, and treat himself as this “sexual object”, who looks at it, strokes it and fondles it till he obtains a complete satisfaction.” (Freud, 1914)

Patrick Bateman is a man with apparently no soul, he walks with this cruelty around his mouth, with a chilling smile, and perfection accomanies him everywhere. All his actions have the shallowness of his business cards and the disgusting taste of his self-awareness.

He has a blurred image throughout the movie, a depersonalization that makes his whole surroundings unnoticeable. All his crimes, being graphic and brutal are the representation of a mixture of aggressive libido and death drive joined together with repression of an overpowering superego, preventing him to realize that he is a pathetic boy who empowers himself with murders and knowledge.

“There are no more barriers to cross. All I have in common with the uncontrollable and the insane, the vicious and the evil, all the mayhem I have caused and my utter indifference toward it I have now surpassed. My pain is constant and sharp, and I do not hope for a better world for anyone. In fact, I want my pain to be inflicted on others. I want no one to escape. But even after admitting this, there is no catharsis; my punishment continues to elude me, and I gain no deeper knowledge of myself. No new knowledge can be extracted from my telling. This confession has meant nothing.” (Mary Harron).

“The destructive omnipotent parts of the self often remains disguised or they may be silent and split off, which obscures their existence and gives the impression that they have no relationship to the external world” (Rosenfeld, 1971).

Embrace our Madness

References.

American Psycho. Dir. Mary Harron. Perfs. Christian Bale. Film. Lionsgate Films, 2000.

Rosenfeld, H. (1971) A Clinical Approach to the Psychoanalytic Theory of the Life and Death Instincts: An Investigation Into the Aggressive Aspects of Narcissism. Int J Psycho-Anal., 52:169-178

Freud, S. (1914) On Narcissism: An Introduction. Standard Edition. London: Hogarth Press, 14: 67-105

Meadow, P. (1989), Object relations in a drive theory model. Modern Psychoanalysis, 14: 57-74.

Meissner, W. (1979), Narcissism and Paranoia. Contemporary Psychoanalysis, 15:527-538.

Fonagy,P., G.S. Moran, & M. Target. (1993), Aggression and the psychological self. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 74:471-485

Rosenfeld, H.S. (1971), A Clinical approach to the psychoanalytic theory of the life and death instincts: an investigation into the aggressive aspects of narcissism. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 52:169-178.

Brenner, C. (1974), The Psychic apparatus. An Elementary Textbook of Psychoanalysis. New York: Anchor Press, pp. 31-56