[HPforGrownups] Re: Forgiveness

[Bart Lidofsky]

No: HPFGUIDX 188693

SteveE wrote:
> 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.

Bart:
    But JKR can look up personality disorders as well as we can. As a 
matter of fact, Voldemort corresponds more to Dr. Robert Hare's 
Psychopathy Checklist than to the official textbook definitions (which 
don't recognize sociopathy or psychopathy as individual mental 
disorders, but as subsets of antisocial personality disorder).

SteveE:
>  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.
>   

Bart:
    The late Dr. Isaac Asimov once did an interesting analysis on the 
controversy that William Shakespeare was not the actual author of the 
plays ascribed to him, but was a "front man" for some other prominent 
Elizabethan (Sir Francis Bacon is often the choice). What Asimov did was 
take a look at the scientific allusions in Shakespeare's plays, and the 
educational systems at the time, and found that the allusions were 
consistent with someone of Shakespeare's level of education, but 
inconsistent with someone of Bacon's or the other suspects' educations. 
The relevance here being that, when psychoanalyzing Morty, it's 
important to look at what JKR's probable level of knowledge on the 
subject is, rather than the knowledge of an expert (if this sounds 
familiar, I also used the Asimov story also when there was a discussion 
of the 4 Houses and the traditional 4 elements; that we had to base any 
analysis on JKR's knowledge, not on the knowledge of scholars in the 
subject).

    Bart