[HPforGrownups] Voldemort/Re: Ending

[Margaret Dean]

No: HPFGUIDX 176054

Renee wrote:

> And now, I hope someone can answer a rather burning question for me.
> JKR has said somewhere that she was trying to depict Voldemort as a
> psychopath. Now I always thought psychopathy was a condition that is
> both incurable and untreatable. Psychopaths lack empathy and are
> incapable of feeling remorse, among other things. Why, then, does JKR
> have Harry suggest that Voldemort try for some remorse? Is this as
> nonsensical as I think it is? Has she failed to take a serious look at
> what psychopathy actually is. Or do I have the wrong ideas about it?

Just because you and I and JKR know this about psychopathy (and
that it applies to Voldemort) doesn't necessarily mean that
Harry, or even Dumbledore, knows it.  If the wizarding world
treats something like suturing a wound as strange and exotic, I
don't expect them to have much awareness of clinical psychology. 
So yes, in a way it's nonsensical, but not from Harry's POV.


--Margaret Dean
  <margdean at erols.com>