Sociopathic Riddle; Sirius and PTSD

[Judy]

No: HPFGUIDX 47337

Audra said:
>>> A great number of (probably most) Antisocial Personality types are
*not* charming.  They are misfits in society with little social skill.
Many spend most of their lives in prison....  
   Young Tom Riddle was not in this category, but I felt the need to
correct your thinking that all people with APD are "*both* charming
and fearless." This is not at all the case. ...
    The behavior that allows someone with APD to come off as
"charming"
is *already* listed in the criteria: *deceitfulness,* repeated lying
and cheating to achieve their end.<<<

I definitely agree that anti-social personality disorder fits Tom
Riddle perfectly.  I've often wondered whether JKR has studied APD and
used the diagnostic criteria to design the character, or whether
perhaps she *knew* someone with anti-social personality and based Tom
Riddle's character on that person. 

I don't actually think that *everyone* with anti-social personality is
charming, so you don't need to correct my thinking.  I was trying to
show how a characteristic (charm) could be used as a classification
criterion for a particular personality type, even if many other
personality types also have that same characteristic.  To do this, I
gave an oversimplified example of how interactive classification
criteria work, involving charm and fearlessness.  The real criteria
are a lot more complicated.

I'd disagree that deceit is the sole reason why some people with this
personality type (I'm not necessarily talking about a disorder) are
charming. Certainly, given his evil intentions, Tom Riddle needs to
deceive people in order to charm them.  But not all people with this
personality type are involved in criminal acts, and therefore, not all
of them need to deceive people in order to charm them.  Sirius doesn't
need to deceive; it's his extroversion that produces his charm. 

Marina said:
> I don't think Azkaban is the traumatizing event for Sirius.
I think the traumatizing event is his discovery of James and Lily's
deaths and Peter's betrayal.< 

This is a very interesting theory, although I still have trouble
connecting Sirius' behavior in PoA with his behavior in GoF.  If he
has only partially recovered, I don't see why his behavior should be
so different.  I also have trouble seeing Sirius as having the
symptoms of PTSD in *either* of the books.  For example, anxiety
symptoms are a hallmark of PTSD, but as far as I can tell,  Sirius
doesn't show much anxiety. However, I agree that we don't have
complete information about Sirius' behavior, so perhaps he has these
symptoms and we just don't see them.

Perhaps in future books JKR will reveal the existence of a "post
dementor-exposure syndrome" that explains the change in Sirius'
behavior?  We already know of the existence of people mentally harmed
by magic (the Longbottoms) so there's no reason why the Potterverse
can't include magically-inflicted emotional disorders that don't exist
in the real world.

Thanks to everyone who wrote to me (onlist or offlist) saying they
liked Sirius in PoA, and why. Several people said they had a great
deal of sympathy for him because of his unfair incarceration in
Azkaban and the trauma of losing his friends.  No question, Sirius has
really been through a lot and this makes him a sympathetic character.
Still, the combination of the Prank, along with other hard-to-explain
actions such as his attack on the Fat Lady, leave me with a lot of
suspicions about him. 

-- Judy Serenity