With the buzz surrounding The Dark Knight Rises release, a psychologist decided to give Batman a psych evaluation. Anyone who knows Bruce Wayne/Batman’s back story knows that he’s a little mental, I mean he does have an alter ego, saves strangers despite being hated most of the time and witnessed the murder of his parents so you wouldn’t really be able to expect him to be “normal.”. Find out how the psychologist evaluated the superhero below.
In her analysis, Rosenberg said she focuses on the things that seem strange about Batman, characteristics that might be read as signs of a psychological disorder. Right off the bat, no pun intended, she must address the caped bat costume. It is actually a uniform, intended to frighten and grab attention, and like a police uniform, to send a particular message to crime victims and criminals, she said.
Batman’s serious temperament and his sense of guilt over the death of his parents and one of his sidekicks could be construed as signs of depression, and his detachment could be taken as a sign of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
“Emotional numbing is a symptom of PTSD, and it involves a sense of detachment from others, and limited expression of emotion,” she told LiveScience.
However, these traits are not conclusive signs of a disorder, although our culture’s tendency to label distinctive behavior as the result of psychological problems can encourage people to read them that way.
“Pathologizing someone is a form of unconsciously taking a mental shortcut when forming an impression of that person,” Rosenberg said. “We don’t do this with all people, but the tendency to ‘put people in a box’ is there; if we meet someone who, at first glance seems to fit a ‘pathology box,’ we will tend to place that person in the box because it’s less effort.”
Rosenberg said she hopes the book will prompt people to think about the boundary between mental health and illness.
A nationally representative survey conducted between 2001 and 2003 estimated that 46.4 percent of Americans would experience a psychological disorder in their lifetimes.
“If half of people will reach the level for disorders, what does it mean? At some point, it becomes the norm,” she said.
Up for revision
Rosenberg draws on movies about Batman and on seminal comic book stories for her analysis. In her book, each chapter takes on a disorder or a spectrum of disorders from which Batman may suffer. But Rosenberg declined to reveal her conclusions about The Caped Crusader’s mental health. [10 Greatest Batman Villains of All Time]
“I invite people, if they know of other stories they think refute my assessment to email me,” she said. “If there is enough out there to change my assessment, I will revise it and do a second edition. So it is really analogous to a clinical assessment. Sometimes you find more about someone as you are going.”
Rosenberg has previously written about the psychology of superheroes, including blogging on the topic for Psychology Today.
