- The psychology of The
Punisher has been explored
so much that it's almost
cliche, at this point.
Like, asking if Batman
is really the crazy one!
Or, whatever.
The path to unlocking
Frank Castle's pathology
practically always
leads to one conclusion:
Post-traumatic stress disorder.
And while that's almost
certainly part of it,
I think there's something
else going on here.
Something a bit more sinister.
I propose that The Punisher is evil.
And to clarify, I don't mean to say
that he's unlawful, right?
'Cause that seems pretty obvious.
Frank Castle openly breaks
the law all of the time.
And I also don't mean to
say that he's immoral.
Whether or not you agree with it,
Frank does have a moral
code that he abides by.
No, what I'm saying is that
I think The Punisher is
psychologically evil.
And to understand what I mean by that,
we're going to have to dive into
the dangerous and disturbing waters
that is the mind of Marvel's
murderous man-at-arms.
When Frank Castle puts a
bullet through someone's head,
what's going through his?
(brooding music)
How are you doing, you wonderful nerds!
Scott here, before we go
any further into this video,
you should know two things:
Firstly, there will be spoilers for
The Punisher Netflix series
and season two of Daredevil
because of course there will be.
And to go along with
that we will be showing
some pretty violent footage from the show
so be prepared for some blood and gore.
I know we have a lot of parents
who watch our videos with their kids
so I just wanna prep you for that.
Starting now.
(glass shatters)
(man screaming)
So I think we're off to a good start.
Introduced as a villain in
Amazing Spider-Man #129,
The Punisher is a vigilante who cleans up
the streets of New York
through domestic terroris--
Nope, that's probably a bit too political,
let's run that back.
(tape rewinding)
- Frank Castle's not a terrorist.
- Even your own paper says different.
- [Scott] Introduced as a villain in
Amazing Spider-Man
#129, the Punisher is...
a person who does bad
things to bad people.
That's close enough!
A seasoned United States
Marine, Frank Castle
had put warfare behind him until
his wife and two kids were murdered.
Seeking vengeance,
Castle grabbed some guns
and waged a one-man war
against his family's killers.
A war that he won.
Like, wasn't even close.
Since 1974, when he was
introduced, The Punisher
has become one of the
most famous anti-heroes
in all of comics.
The man's even gone beyond the medium.
I mean, we've talked
before about how his logo
was adopted by the real life
SEAL Team 3, among others.
Especially people who like guns.
There's a saying in America
that's been thrown around
from time to time that, "The only way
to stop a bad guy with a gun,
is a good guy with a gun."
And to many, Frank Castle
is that good guy with a gun.
But, hold on.
Is Frank Castle really a
good guy in the first place?
I mean, the one thing
pretty much anyone knows
about the guy is that he kills people.
Murder is The Punisher's M.O.
But alright, as we established earlier,
he doesn't just waste anyone.
The Punisher has a moral code.
His targets are criminals
and only criminals.
Those who he believes
deserve a one-way ticket
to Mephisto's gates.
- [Punisher] I think
that the people I kill
need killing, that's what I think.
- [Daredevil] You left men
hanging from meat hooks.
- [Punisher] Yeah, nobody got
hurt who didn't deserve it.
- [Scott] It's easy for us to buy
that he's supposed to be the good guy
because we're the audience.
But what about the man himself?
What drives Frank Castle to be
the most famous executioner
in all of comics?
I'm not talking about
character motivations
like revenge, or justice,
or anything like that.
I'm more interested in his psychology.
So, let's explore that and find out
if The Punisher really is
Marvel's ultimate anti-hero.
Or, if he's just as evil as his targets.
Now the big problem with this question
should be pretty obvious:
How would we even begin
to scientifically diagnose something
as broad as evil?
Well thankfully, we are
not the first people
to give it a try.
In 1997, a neuroscientist
named Dr. Itzhak Fried,
a name that I am almost
certainly mispronouncing,
attempted to do just that.
Fried wanted to diagnose evil as disease
that he dubbed Syndrome E.
Fried devised a set of symptoms
to define and understand the pathology
of the most malicious
individuals among us.
And hopefully, prevent any disaster
that they could cause.
And if you think the E in
Syndrome E stands for evil,
you'd only be somewhat correct.
As Fried explained in an interview:
"I made a decision not
to use the word evil,
"as I thought it invited metaphors
"and biased the inquisitive mind.
"But I stuck with E."
Now, I know that labeling
evil as a disease
is kind of a peculiar thought.
But let's run with this premise for a bit.
At the very least, it does give us a term
that's fitting for a comic book.
We often think of murder as something
that rides on emotions,
something impulsive.
Where the intent draws from the situation
from a loss of self-control.
Giving into irrational,
animalistic instincts.
It even has a catchy
name: a crime of passion.
In fact, you may recognize this term
having been thrown around in regards to
Punisher's body count before.
In the second season of the
Daredevil Netflix series,
Matt Murdock and company serve
as Punisher's attorneys when he's arrested
for you know, punishing!
To help his case, an expert witness
is put on the stand to
explain Castle's mindset.
You see, our boy Frank
here was shot in the head.
The witness points out
that the bullet damaged
the part of Castle's brain that affects
sympathy and logical thought,
creating a condition known
as sympathetic storming.
Frank, as this witness explains,
is in a constant state of fight or flight.
He argues that Castle is
always emotionally high-strung,
and that his lawbreaking
could never be premeditated,
never determined by rational thought
and personal judgment in
advance of committing it.
The argument given is that every murder
by Frank Castle's hands is invariably
a crime of passion.
- And one who's suffering
from extreme disturbance,
is it possible to willfully
premeditate a crime?
- Any infractions would be
considered crimes of passion.
- [Scott] So there we have
it. Case closed, right?
The show just gave us an explanation.
But, I can't help but
notice that that answer
couldn't be further from the truth.
I mean, really?
Punisher never premeditates his killings?
That's his whole thing!
Now, to be fair to the
show, we as an audience
were never expected to
believe this explanation.
In the context of the trial, it's clear
that Foggy Nelson, one
of Frank's attorneys,
was using the expert
quote unquote, diagnosis,
as a way to sway the jury, not necessarily
to have any semblance of accuracy.
Although Frank is, yes,
undoubtedly passionate
about killing criminals, especially
when it comes to anyone connected
to the murder of his family,
he's rarely impulsive about it.
Frank's murders are calculated.
Because of his code, which
forces him to determine
first if his target
deserves the death sentence,
pretty much every kill
Punisher carries out,
by definition, is premeditated.
It's not really something
that's emotionally impulsive.
In fact, even in those rare moments
when his assaults are
reactive instead of proactive,
he still doesn't seem emotional.
Quite the opposite, he sometimes
appears cold and detached.
So much so, that he's almost
like this force of nature.
A monsoon of death and bloodshed.
I don't even know what a monsoon is.
(keyboard tapping)
Hmm, learn something new every day.
Anyway, the point is I think we need
a better diagnosis for Frank Castle
than what the show is giving us.
And this is where Syndrome
E could help us out.
In his paper on the
subject, Fried attempted
to outline the symptoms of Syndrome E.
Behaviors that a person would exhibit
while keeping language, memory,
and problem solving skills intact.
So let's run through a list, and see
how Frank stacks up with some
of these signs, shall we?
Alright, let's see what we got here.
First up, repetitive acts of violence.
(chugging heavy metal music)
I'm gonna mark that one as a maybe.
Next up, there's rapid habituation.
Which basically means that the more
you commit violent acts,
the easier they become.
Frank's first kill or
two might have been hard,
but we definitely see that he's
become desensitized to all
that bloodshed over time.
So, check.
Then we have compartmentalization,
where one can care about their own family,
yet enact violence on someone else
who presumably has their own loved ones.
That seems like a check.
Next, we have obsessive ideation.
It's basically the notion
of clinging to an ideology
that one believes justifies violence.
Like Nazis, or ISIS, or
the less political Hydra.
Let's go with Hydra.
And again, this is
another really obvious one
that we can pin on The Punisher.
It's all about his moral code
that we talked about earlier.
As long as he determines that
the criminals deserve it,
killing is justified in his eyes.
- I keep forgetting
about your thing, Frank.
Only do unto bad guys.
Rob Badass Peter so you
can kill Psycho Paul.
So on and so forth, what do you call that?
Is that a code?
- [Scott] And if you wronged him,
he's not gonna stop until
he has hunted you down.
Check.
Next on the list we have group contagion.
It's essentially mob mentality, right?
When someone starts
behaving a certain way,
it catches on and spreads to
other members of the group.
Now, you might not think this would fall
under Frank's condition because
he typically works alone,
but Punisher has shown the
capacity to work with others.
Like Micro, for example.
And, without fail, Frank's violent nature
definitely started to
transfer over to Micro.
- He said that you never
got your hands dirty.
- What did I do? What did I do?
Look at my hands. I got my
hands dirty you piece of (beep).
- [Scott] Another check there.
Further down the list, we have
diminished affective reactivity.
Now this is a fancy way of discussing
what we already talked about.
Much of the violence perpetuated
by an individual is carried out
not in a battlefield frenzy,
nor in a burst of emotion,
but with flat affect.
As he carries out his kills,
Punisher doesn't appear
to be emotionally affected by
any of his own blood sheds.
In fact, the only thing that seems
to elicit some kind of reaction from Frank
is the memory of his massacred family.
And man that is rough!
But it does give us
another check on the list.
And it also conveniently ties into
the next item on our list: Hyperarousal.
And hey, keep it in your pants, Micro!
It's not that kind of arousal.
In this context, Fried compares it to
more of a surging anxiety that can cause
things like increased irritability,
constantly feeling like
you need to be on guard,
and even give you trouble
falling and staying asleep.
And, as I'm sure some of you guys
are already commenting, hyperarousal is,
of course, common in people with PTSD.
I know, it's just one of those things
that we can't escape when we're
talking about The Punisher.
So, let's talk about it very briefly.
- You gotta cover your ass.
- [Scott] Exactly.
If you're unfamiliar,
post-traumatic stress disorder,
or PTSD, is a psychiatric disorder
that can occur within
anyone who has experienced
a profoundly traumatic event.
Given Frank's backstory as a Marine
and the fact that his family
was murdered in front of him,
PTSD could absolutely make sense
as the catalyst for his tendencies.
Does he show signs of having it?
Absolutely, he has
symptoms like nightmares,
triggers, negative beliefs,
and as we discussed,
the thing that brought
us here, hyperarousal.
I'm certainly not arguing
that The Punisher doesn't have PTSD.
I think he does.
But Frank Castle's pathology
seems to extend beyond it.
Displaying a mental state
that point for point
qualifies as psychologically evil.
- All of them, they all
think that you're a monster!
But I know that you're not. You're not.
- You sure about that?
- [Scott] But I would love
to know what you guys think.
Is The Punisher evil?
Is it even practical or possible
to diagnose evil as a disease?
Let me know your thoughts in the comments,
and I'll respond to some of them
in the next comment response video.
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Thank you guys so much for watching.
My name is Scott, reminding you to
read between the panels and
grow smarter through comics.
See you.
