Forgiveness

[SteveE]

No: HPFGUIDX 188692

Steve replies: Putting real life personality disorder criteria on a fictional character is always really tricky, fun, but tricky.  JKR can mix and match personality traits for LV as she deems necessary for plot and character development. Like Pippin, I kind of see more sociopathic tendencies in V1 and more psychopathic tendencies in V2. But being a psychotherapist, let me back up abit and explain my views on why I think this way.

By very general definition, a sociopath is just a person w/ an antisocial personality disorder.  A psychopath is a person w/ an antisocial personality disorder that makes them act out in an aggressive, perverted, violent or amoral manner w/o empathy or remorse for their actions.  In general, sociopaths control themselves better than psychopaths do and may take years to destroy selected targets.  In general, psychopaths have poor impulse control, have violent outbursts and are more prone to violence than sociopaths are.  

So by that definition, and I'm not sure if this backs up Pippin's views totally, but from my professional POV, V2 is more flamboyant, more impulsively violent and more predatory in nature to live off others, yet always blaming others for their actions.  

The other reasons I think LV is more sociopathic than psychopathic is that sociopaths usually have a long history of juvinile deliquency; they will change themselves (or at least appear to do so) if they know it will keep them from being found out (as LV did at Hogwarts to fool the staff for example); and they will never take blame for anything they have done.  Sociopaths have no room for love in their lives, and will "show" love and happiness only when it serves their cause, but these "feelings" shown are not genuine.

However, one of the main reasons I didn't apply a real life label of psychopath to LV, especially V-1, was that psychopaths tend to try suicide (even if they rarely succeed, they still attempt suicide).  And of course, LV had a distinct fear of death and went to drastic measures w/ the horcruxes to protect himself from death. 

Steve, who begs forgiveness for the psych 101 lecture, and hopes he hasn't muddied the waters even more...lol.

pippin wrote:

> > Kemper now:
> > I don't see this as forgiveness.  He needs his Death Eaters to be more powerful and scary.  He rescues Bella because his other Death Eaters have been caught and so has lost supporters which make him less powerful and scary.  It's calculating not forgiving which makes Harry's suggestion of remorse still laughable.
> > 
> 
> Pippin:
> Ah, but V2 isn't as calculating as V1. That was one of the big shocks in DH. We were expecting to find the WW in the hands of a cold, calculating supervillain, but V2 has impulse control problems that V1 never had. That, IMO, is because V2 has impulses that V1 never had. V2 throws tantrums like a two year old, not coincidentally because his moral sense is just exactly two years old. 
> 
> V1 never considered whether his victims deserved what they got. He handed out rewards and punishments to manipulate people, or because it amused him. He was going to feed Wormtail to Nagini to punish him for  carelessness, but changed his mind when it turned out that Crouch's escape hadn't succeeded after all.  Wormtail was in luck and Nagini was out of it.  t Wormtail's carelessness was not any less because of that, but in V1's cosmos, people suffer because they are unlucky, not because they deserve to. 
> 
> But V2 is deliciously aware that Wormtail deserves pain for neglecting his master, even though Voldemort is no longer suffering from that neglect at the time. 
> 
> V2  wants to reward the DE's who went to Azkaban for him above all others (though their being there is certainly of no benefit to him). Most of all,  he's aware as he kills Snape that Snape deserves better of him. Psychopaths don't think like that, IMO.
> 
> Pippin
>