- main site  -- links  --mailing list -- guestbook -- admin

opinions

psychoanalysis • pairings • clones • from hate to love

We come to the long-standing and highly-debated question:

Is Enishi insane? Is he or isn't he a psychopath?

Misunderstanding of the situation has caused many a fanfic writer to cast poor Eni-chan as a stalker, an overprotective lover, a reckless murderer, among several other things. All quite unfair to the guy.

EK and Firuze's position on the matter is most aptly stated by this chorus: He’s not crazy, he’s just a little unwell.

While he fulfills some definitions for being a psychopath, there are not enough signs to prove that Enishi can be jailed or thrown into a mental institution. Remember, Saitou arrested him, not because of Jinchuu, not because he was psychotic, but because of his smuggling operations.

Here are the established characteristics of a psychopath, taken from The Hare Psychopathy Checklist-Revised 1991, Toronto: Multihealth Systems .

-- glibness/ superficial charm
-- need for stimulation/prone to boredom<
-- conning/manipulative
-- shallow emotional response
-- parasitic lifestyle
-- promiscuous sexual behavior
-- lack of realistic long-term goals
-- irresponsibility
-- many short-term relationships
-- revocation of conditional release
-- grandiose sense of self-worth
-- pathological lying
-- lack of remorse or guilt
-- callous/lack of empathy
-- poor behavioral controls
-- early behavioral problems
-- impulsivity
-- failure to accept responsibility for ttheir own actions
-- juvenile delinquency
-- criminal versatility

Different people judge Enishi differently according to those guidelines. This is based on the person’s subjective opinion of the character and the person’s understanding of the characteristics.

"The psychopath is one of the most fascinating and distressing problems of human experience. For the most part, a psychopath never remains attached to anyone or anything. They live a "predatory" lifestyle. They feel little or no regret, and little or no remorse - except when they are caught. They need relationships, but see people as obstacles to overcome and be eliminated. If not, they see people in terms of how they can be used. They use people for stimulation, to build their self-esteem and they invariably value people in terms of their material value (money, property, etc..)."

"A psychopath can have high verbal intelligence, but they typically lack "emotional intelligence". They can be expert in manipulating others by playing to their emotions. There is a shallow quality to the emotional aspect of their stories (i.e., how they felt, why they felt that way, or how others may have felt and why). The lack of emotional intelligence is the first good sign you may be dealing with a psychopath. A history of criminal behavior in which they do not seem to learn from their experience, but merely think about ways to not get caught is the second best sign."

Granted, the definition quite hits the mark. But before you say "case closed", please read the quote from Robert Hare, the guy who made the checklist above. "That's the psychopath: somebody who doesn't understand what's going on emotionally, but understands that something important has happened."

No, Enishi was not drawn and created to be like that.

Granted, he is sometimes delusional (he thinks only he can bring down justice on Kenshin), he sometimes has hallucinations (but as Firuze has pointed out, Kenshin and Sanosuke have seen and talked to ghosts, too), he is rather impulsive, and he doesn't care what happens to other people. All these are general signs associated with being a psychopath. But it is important to remember that, as he is presented in the manga, he does not fulfill ALL the requirements and degrees of severity for the diagnosis. He is still rather normal, when placed against real psychopaths. And, he doesn't present with those signs all the time.

As for being psychotic, "psychosis" is correctly and clinically defined as "inability to distinguish reality from fantasy; impaired reality testing, with the creation of a new reality". Now, despite how obsessed with his sister Enishi might be, he can still definitely tell what is real, what is before him, and what isn't. Come on, would Jinchuu arc be quite a success if he didn't know what he had working for him? Would he have been able to plan out the weapons, the sequence of attack, the desired effect, if he was not in touch with reality?

As for being schizophrenic, that Enishi is definitely not. For that matter, neither is Kenshin.Schizophrenia isn’t a double-personality disorder; that would be the manic-depressive disorders or split-type disorders. A schizoid is the kind who has delusions and hallucinations, odd speech—your average loony type person. And, no, Enishi doesn’t fit the bill of the average loony type person.

It is EK's opinion that Enishi just has a one-track mind, and he could not be blamed. After all, in an instant, he had seen his sister, the only mother he had known, die a violent death. The trauma from that experience definitely affected his way of thinking from then on. Life had not been good to him; he was not given a chance to have a normal childhood. Therefore, a childhood grudge and trauma stayed and grew with him, and gave him a reason to keep living when there was no other reason to stay alive.

So we say it again.

He's not crazy; he's just a little unwell.

Opinions? Violent reactions? Contact ek_kaoru@yahoo.com .