At some point in our lives, haven’t we all thought about what it’d be like to be the leader of an empire? Our curiosity might reflect the hidden impulses that we all want to unleash only to be knocked down by society’s rules and inhibitions. However, for some fictional characters, society is no match for the death of a moral compass and a loss of a conscience. “Technically, chemistry is the study of matter, but I prefer to see it as the study of change,” Walter White said to his high school chemistry students in the pilot episode of Breaking Bad and drastically change he did. The transformation from gregarious high school chemistry teacher to nefarious methamphetamine kingpin can only be logically explained as a direct result of a significant psychopathology.
As a psychology major finally finishing the show, I listened to this figure describe his life to me through the screen, and I pondered what psychopathologies could perfectly describe him if he was my client. Walter Hartwell White, also known by his clandestine alias “Heisenberg”, is the subject of my theoretical case study. Walt’s pathological, almost Machiavellian, manipulation of others, even those who know him best, begs the question as to who truly is the real Walter White. Are we presented a sympathetic man who took a turn for the worse after his initial cancer diagnosis? Or are we presented a man with a hidden agenda who simply waited for an opportunity to exorcise his inner demons? This man has forgotten more chemistry than the average person learns in a lifetime, yet he’s stuck in a moribund job teaching an apathetic generation of teenagers in Albuquerque, New Mexico. That has got to be gut-wrenchingly painful for a former graduate of the California Institute of Technology who happened to be one of the founders of the multi-billion dollar company Gray Matter Technologies. He abruptly left the company for reasons unknown and sold his shares for a mere $5000 before the company took off and became a powerhouse. That kind of personal decision has got to eat him at the core. Nonetheless, he married a beautiful woman, had a wonderful son, and appeared to be living a happy, albeit an unfulfilling, life. He obeyed the rules. He paid his taxes. He was genuinely a family man, but he was miserable. Once he began to illegally manufacture crystal meth, even though his brother-in-law was a DEA agent, he started playing with fire. That’s when the fun really began.
Through his recollection, Walter White spoke about the numerous murders he either witnessed or committed himself. Every death was in the “best interests” of his family. He wanted his family to live the life that he thought they deserved, which is a respectable aspiration. However, the methods he chose to go about acquiring his wealth reek of antisocial personality disorder with a hint of narcissistic personality disorder, but I want to focus on the sociopathic nature of this man. There is not one specific definition for being a psychopath/sociopath, but make no mistake about it, we are dealing with one here. Both terms are used interchangeably but they are more commonly referred to as antisocial personality disorder. Walter White wasn’t asocial, which is what most people think of when they hear the term “antisocial.” Actually, he was far from being asocial. The DSM states that with antisocial PD there is a pervasive pattern of disregard for and violation of the rights of others with a stipulation that a person must be at least 18 years of age to receive the diagnosis. There’s specific common criteria, which can include a lack of empathy, lack of conscience, violence or cruel behavior, manipulation, superficial charm, lack of remorse, etc. I can emphatically declare Walter White to be in possession of all of these qualifications to a high degree. Maybe society restricts these characteristics in most human beings, but Walt is clearly unlike most human beings.
It’s interesting to ponder the etiology of this suggested pathology that Mr. White developed. Most people with antisocial personality disorder display some patterns of misbehavior in their adolescence in what’s known as conduct disorder, but that seems to be missing in Walt’s particular case. For all I know, he was a brilliant young man with a bright future ahead of him. It’s more likely than not that he had a yearning desire for risk-taking and power, but he was suppressed at an early age by his parents. I propose that the turning point in his life was the revelation of his stage three lung cancer, because the diagnosis proved to be the necessary impetus for a life of calculated crime. His cancer diagnosis meant he had nothing to lose; no more rules to obey. His imminent death meant he wouldn’t suffer a life in jail even if he was caught, so why not play God with his own life? The incentive to break the law was justified, at least in his own mind, by the fact that his family was down on their luck with bills and the notion that he wouldn’t be able to provide for them once he was six feet under the ground. Of course, these justifications would prove to be fruitless, because at the end of the day, one cannot go around murdering people regardless of the provided reasoning. There’s no question that Walt had unconditional love for his wife and son, but they seemed to be pawns on his chessboard that he carefully manipulated as the king piece. Walt’s incomparable ability to lie and get out of sticky situations certainly were his blessing and his curse.
As with many other personality disorders, other psychodynamic theorists have proposed that antisocial PD starts with an absence of parental love during infancy, leading to a lack of basic trust and a development of emotional aloofness. This etiology makes perfect sense as Walt would never accept help from anyone. People with antisocial PD have been found to more likely than not have had significant distress in their childhoods. Walt’s father’s health rapidly deteriorated upon developing Huntington’s disease and all the positive memories family members tried to implant in his head never supplanted the terrifying image of seeing his father on his deathbed. That memory haunts Walt and lends more credibility to the theory of childhood inadequacies as the leading factor in his current affinity for power and destructiveness. The trigger points have existed in Walt for decades, but it took the diagnosis of his own personal fatal disease to unlock them and let loose this savage beast. With this particular individual, we might have simply reached a point of no return, because he clearly shows no remorse for his own wrongdoing. Every criminal activity was a means to an end. That end was to provide permanent financial stability for his family after he succumbed to cancer, but he entered remission.
Treatments for people with antisocial personality disorder are typically ineffective, mostly due to the individuals’ lack of a conscience or desire to change. Walt seems to enjoy his transformation from innocuous teacher to ruthless criminal mastermind. He disposed of his victims by corroding their bodies with the use of hydrofluoric acid for crying out loud. However, it doesn’t hurt to attempt to rid this man of his sociopathic tendencies. In my humble opinion, the best approach seems to be through the cognitive perspective. I would recommend that Walter White partake in heavy introspection in order to think about moral issues and about the needs of other people. Reconfiguring his maladaptive cognitions would be the most empirically proven method of curing this man of antisocial PD, but there’s no definitive way to stabilize a sociopath. There’s no resurrecting his fallen victims. I would also recommend the use of atypical antipsychotic drugs, but systematic studies of this claim are still needed. I only hope that we could salvage what’s left, if anything, of Walt’s conscience and moral compass.
