Subject A Is A Psychotic Serial Killer

The court to exhibit Subject A’s behavior, the narrator from the short story “The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allen Poe. Subject A is now going under experimentation to determine whether or not Subject A is a psychotic killer. Carefully analyzed it has been determined that Subject A is a psychotic killer.

In the article ‘’Portrait of a Psychopath’’ by Denise Mann it states that the regular psychopath has five indications. These indications show the behavior of a psychotic serial killer. The five indications include Sociopath Personality Disorder, Appearing Normal, Need for Power and Control over Victim, Low Autonomic Arousal, and Lack of Empathy. Subject’s A behavior matches all of the categories; therefore: he is a psychotic serial killer.

Denise Mann dictated that “Psychopaths have low autonomic arousal. They don’t react and don’t show a lot of affection or emotion” (Mann 7). The narrator showed the many signs of low autonomic arousal such as motive for murder, no emotions, and he was cold and callous. Subject A exclaimed crazily “How then, am I mad? Hearken! And observe how calmly I can tell you the whole story” which demonstrates that he had no emotions and was dispassionate (p. 1). Subject A also shows signs of being cold and callous. He stated “If you still think me mad, you will think so no longer when I describe the wise precautions I took for the concealment of the body. First of all, I dissembled the corpse. I cut off the head and the arms and the legs” which prove him callous by being proud of his own body and the precautions that he took to hide the body (p. 8). He also showed that he had a motive for murder, this was proven when he stated “I made up my mind to take the life of the old man, and thus rid myself of the eye forever” which shows that his reason for the murder was the old man’s eye. To conclude, Subject A had very low autonomic arousal which made him cold, callous, dispassionate and a reason for

As Denise Mann declared psychopaths “enjoy the suffering of their victims” and lacks empathy, this is present throughout Subject A (Mann 11). The narrator said to himself “I knew what the old man felt, and pitied him, although I chuckled at heart,” this showed that he laughed at the old man even though he knows what he’s feeling. Lacking empathy can make someone have little or no understanding of other’s feelings and the narrator exemplifies this. The narrator also dictated, “To think that there I was, opening the door, little by little, and he not even to dream of my secret deeds or thoughts. I fairly chuckled at the idea…” which shows that Subject A lacked empathy for the old man and had the sagacity to chuckle at his death (p. 4). Subject A clearly lacked empathy, especially for the old