The Ernest Becker Foundation

Title: Media and Envy of the Hideous Strength of the Psychopath
Author: Henry Richards
Location: LOV V: Violence and the Media
Date: 10/23/1999
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Lecture write-up:

Henry Richards, a forensic psychologist, pointed out the increasing reliance of the media on fearsome but enviable psychopathic violence to portray potency. The inhumanity of the psychopath can even be seen as virtuous as he erases ambiguity and deals with God-like strength and certainty to resolve conflict single-mindedly. He unhesitatingly defines public enemies and scapegoats and dispatches them without remorse, quite unaware that he is appealing to the unconscious denial of death and facilitating the return of barbarous mythic archetypes of renewal and immortality. Using Becker's insights, Richards helped us understand the envy of evil and demythologized the psychopathic way of living.

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