Is James Bond a psychopath?

[ColinJ]

Don't know so much a psychopath as a leering pervert...........I watched the Roger Moore bond films last week on telly, and got the impression that he (Bond (or Moore)) was a right sleazebag.

I watched You Only Live Twice last night and had a flashback to going to the cinema to watch it with my dad when I was 11 years old. I remembered cringing with embarrassment at some of the double entendres.   

"Oh, I love serving under you, James!"

Innocent days...

 

[szygy]

I would have put members of the SS at the top of a 'people suspected to have been psychopaths' list!

Yes that is what most people seem to think. In fact most SS people acted out of desire to please their peers. There was something on the telly a few months ago about the search for war criminals in south america in the 50s and 60s, and part of the program described how the sight of an abbatoir brought back memories of the camps to an ex-commandant. The effect of this was he was off beef for months and had sleepless nights; not the reaction of a psychopath. Also remember that the death camp guards frequently had to get blind drunk before being able to act in the way they did.
I dont think that brutality or sadism are the marks of a psychopath, more that this is a way of medicalising human behaviour that conflicts with the 'we are all lovely and kind and just want to get along' view of human motivations.

 

[benb]

The interesting, and disturbing thing is that the majority of SS/Gestapo/Death camp personnel were just ordinary Germans. We underestimate our capability to do abhorrent things just because an authority figure tells us to.

Have a read of the Milgram Experiment before deciding that there could never be a British Gestapo.