My husband and I have been spending the past several evenings watching the new, American edition of House of Cards. It’s a sinister but engaging series about the machinations of power at the highest levels, featuring an anti-hero protagonist. Francis (Frank) Underwood is a character of Shakepearean dimensions—a latter day version of what you might get if you were to cross Iago with Macbeth (indeed, some of the episodes are decidedly elegant and clever riffs on these).
He’s also a psychopath. The recent definitions of psychopathy do not require violent behaviours or any other such displays. Instead, the current construal of the condition has more to do with a lack of compassion or empathy, combined with a superficial charm or charisma. This juxtaposition means that the psychopathic individual is observant enough to be able to enact appealing behaviours that persuade others to do things for them—but in cases where the charm doesn’t work, such individuals are not burdened by conscience, guilt or regret.
This doesn’t automatically translate to violence, as most psychopaths are smart enough to know that violence isn’t always the easiest path to obtaining the outcome they seek.
In the case of Frank, he is possessed of an overweening ambition, combined with a keen intelligence and a complete lack of compassion—one gets the sense that he sees people with no more or less empathy than he has for the pieces in the chess game that he is occasionally seen playing.
I find him repugnant,* even as I am fascinated by his combination of cold brilliance, a willingness to cross line after line in pursuit of his ends, and an ability to strategize and manipulate as necessary, with what seems like an almost preternatural effectiveness. I know that I could never do such things and am horrified by the lines he crosses—often with utter indifference—but there’s a peculiarly riveting quality to watching the kind of freedom of action that arises out of being unburdened by empathy and concern for others.
I suppose that’s part of why I made the villain in my novel Konstantin’s Gifts a psychopath. The setting, which is an alternate version of late 19th century Russia, means that like Dostoyevsky’s Raskolnikov, Konstantin has been exposed to and has bought into the prevalent idea of the ubermensch—an overman, sometimes translated as “superman”—who is extraordinary and free of conscience. Unlike Raskolnikov, whose conscience proves to be more of a problem than he anticipated, Konstantin does not succumb to any second thoughts. He is also smart enough to understand what people want and yearn for, but this perception does not transfer down to the emotional level—and so he is unburdened of conscience, guilt and empathy. Which isn’t to say that he doesn’t feel emotion. Like Frank, he is fully capable of emoting, but all his emotional responses arise out of his own wants, desires, frustrations and angers. This is part of what makes him so dangerous. From his perspective, the world is literally his oyster, to be boiled and eaten, no matter that the world might have other ideas.
*In truth, I don’t know that there are too many characters in that series whom I actually like, even though I’m very much engaged by the story arcs.
February 17, 2014 Update: The above observations are from season one, though we just started watching season two and they seem to be borne out, at least by S2E2, which is all we’ve seen so far. Frank remains horrifyingly fascinating, because he is a brilliant strategist who is unbound by the ethics and morality that are such cornerstones of most of our identities and that we value and cherish as such. He also presents a fascinating contrast with another potent, fictional anti-hero of our time, Walter White.
Kat's Blog 
I think part of the appeal of psychopathic characters is that they allow the audience to fantasize about how their life would be without inhibition or regret.
Indeed, in imagining such a life, despite its emotional barrenness, there is a great deal of appeal in the psychopath’s social ease, drive, ruthless ambition and, sometimes, sexual conquest.
I think this is quite apparent in popular media, in shows like “Dexter”. On one hand, we condemn the extrajudicial and ethically dubious decisions Dexter takes, on the other, the premise is one that serves the repressed sadism of society towards criminals. This is addressed in part by season 2, which is pretty meta and self-aware.
It’s an interesting pretext- a character that allows us, in a sense, to explore the depths of our own nature, while disavowing his or her actions as immoral or amoral. It is having one’s cake and eating it, if you’ll excuse the cliché
Thanks for the comment, Tom! I absolutely agree.
Shows like Dexter appeal to the side of us that feels outraged when someone gets off for a heinous crime on a “technicality”–it appeals to the side of us that seeks retributive justice and would relish at the prospect of seeing people who do terrible things suffer. Sure, we’d never cross that line in real life, but seeing Dexter do his thing to people who have done such terrible things feels deeply satisfying. Though the other thing I found fascinating about Dexter was the fact that he walks such a fine line in conforming to the “code of Harry” and there’s an edged tension to seeing how he will be tempted and whether or not he will succumb to the enticement of crossing the line.
Francis Underwood, meanwhile, presents us with a glimpse of what it might be like to be unfettered by compassion and conscience–a similar kind of transgressive appeal to the fact that he acts without compunction. In his case, though, staying within the boundaries of decorum is about calculated risk (how close can he go before he is found out for what he truly is?). Watching someone play at life as if it were chess, with similar stratagems and complex maneuvers, is a riveting prospect indeed, because it’s not something we could ever actually do.
Agreed, good observations.
Something that both shows have in common is that they address the viewer. (House of Cards more overtly)
It is as though we are invited into the mind of these psychopaths, that we are imparted in some way with unique and secret knowledge. It is interesting how engrossing such characters are, and in some instances, even likeable despite their obvious and numerous moral transgressions.
You’re right, Francis Underwood is Machiavellian in the extreme. If we are to limit ourselves to these two aforementioned shows, LaGuerta is more analogous to Underwood than Dexter is. However, she is by no means a psychopath, to state the obvious.
To go off on a tangent, the more I think about it, the less psychopathic Dexter seems. He is not grandiose, glib or impulsive, he has a select few who he cares about, whether or not he admits this to himself, he has experienced remorse. He seems more like the “affectless schizoid” Theodore Millon identified, this is evident in his meticulous and compulsive nature, and his indifference to (rather than violations of) social norms, in addition to his solitary nature. He has no criminal diversity! The only norm he breaks is that of murder, and this is applied in a pseudolegal and methodical manner.
I wonder how he would have developed if his Harry had not convinced him he was a psychopath.
I would agree, actually, that Dexter is not a psychopath based on the definition I use in the piece (the inability to feel compassion/empathy)–and indeed, the “affectless schizoid” concept is likely a far better characterization. I think he does care, as you say, whether or not he admits it. Otherwise, he would likely have chosen Rudy over Deb in the first season, for instance.
My take would be (based on having viewed seasons 1 and 2 only) that there are a lot of emotions and there’s a lot of caring/compassion among them there, but his traumatic childhood experiences caused some kind of severance between the emotions and the ability for him to experience them properly (possibly analogous something like leprosy, where the mind doesn’t register feeling in a limb, but the limb can still be bruised, or injured). The conduit, and the one way Dexter does feel at the beginning of the series, is via blood–this visceral, physical, life source. Blood makes him feel alive, and brings out emotions (again, intuitively, I’d go with the idea that this is because the trauma that cased the rest of the severance was so steeped in blood–it’s now the only way he can feel). So his murderousness is the result of this need to feel. Given that, and the fact that his need to spill blood is what prompted Harry’s decision to teach him the Code, I don’t know that Harry’s assumption he was a psychopath rather than something else, would have changed things…
Re Underwood–his addressing of the audience, and making them complicit in what he’s thinking, is very Shakespearean (the “Shakespearean aside”). It’s part of what makes Iago so compelling in Othello, even though he’s the villain of the piece. I also loved that “at home with the Macbeths” feel to HoC–Francis and Lady Macbeth, two of a kind, scheming away (though he never had the virtue that Macbeth possessed, but just the appearance of virtue).
There’s also a wonderful scene in which Francis discusses the fleetingness of life and blows out a candle that is such a great riff on Macbeth’s “out, out, brief candle” that I was actually grinning as I watched! So well done.
Another show that uses the Shakespearean aside/confidences to great effect, in drawing us into the world and the world view of an anti-hero, is “Lord of War”. The protagonist makes the audience his confidant, and I expect that’s part of what makes it such compelling viewing, even as we see him perform morally horrifying act after act. Not sure if he’s a psychopath either, but if he isn’t, he’s something awfully close.
Pingback: The Age of the Anti-Hero?: Walter White v. Frank Underwood | Kat's Blog
You know that “Übermensch” is a Nazi concept, right?
Something that only monsters like the SS Totenkopfstaffel, Stalin’s death squads, and of course Americans like.
The term Übermensch was coined by Nietzche in the 19th century, as arising out of a set of concepts prevailing at the time (which also tied into notions of evolution)–this is why I was speculating that Dostoyevsky might have derived Raskonikov’s notions of the so-called “superior” or “exceptional” human from a similar cluster or thread of thought.
The concepts and terms were indeed appropriated by the Nazis, and by Hitler, as part of his genocidal, “ethnically cleansed” vision of a Nazi empire founded by his notion of the blond, Aryan race (which confuses me because the historical Aryans were a tribe in India). He also appropriated the Indian symbol of the swastika, which had a very different meaning in India and has now, sadly, become conflated with the horrors and atrocities of the Third Reich.
I’m not sure that Americans as a collective group like the “Übermensch” notion much more than any other national group. Different sub-groups from many nationalities (as you implicitly point out) have ended up poised and in positions of power that have, in some cases, arisen out of a rhetoric of racial or cultural superiority. This sort of destructive rhetoric has indeed been exploited, often, giving rise to the suffering and deaths of millions.
Ultimately, fictional characters who pursue an amoral “I’m a superior being who can manipulate, kill and perform other atrocities without conscience and consequences” are generally depicted as villains, or at best, as anti-heroes, like Underwood.
I do agree with you very much that Frank displays many psychopathological traits, however I am not too sure he can be labelled completely as a psychopath as in the first series, it shows how he cared very much for his old school friends. It also indicated that he had a homosexual relationship with one of them. The fact that he put so much care and warmth into that friendship/relationship conveys he does show some true empathy, which is not a characteristic of a psychopath. He definitely has some sort of antisocial behaviour disorder, but I am not sure to what extent he can be fully diagnosed as a psychopath.