Crazy, Not Insane

Fascinating and heartbreaking look at how severe child abuse can create multiple personalities in children and how those multiples can impacts their adult lives. The movie covers several cases the person had one personality to protect their mental health as a child, while they also developed another personality that would carry out horrific acts. The doc digs in and questions whether a person can be legally sane (eligible for the death penalty) if they were disassociated during the violent act against others. Super interesting although incredibly sad all around.

Intense, thought provoking.

It is a documentary about Dr. Dorothy Lewis's work on the psychology of killing. However, the work mostly focuses on her study on serial killers and DID, the question of what motivates us to kill is not properly investigated as the doc rather chooses to focus on the cases with a history of abuse. I am not an authority about the matter, hovewer, I find it insufficient that only counter perspective to that of Lewis is an former goverment worker who had been portrayed one-sided.

Daring, schoking and mostly fascinating, this documentary is a inmersive exploration of human brain, and its behaviour in a world full of abuse, violence and trauma.

Like the subjects who committed these crimes, this film is a muddled and messy piece of work. It ultimately has me questioning whether psychology (or ‘psychiatry' to be generous) is actually a science. Inner psychic states are still outside direct observation, no matter how many MRIs we might present, and interviews, like the position or speed of electrons under Heisenberg's gaze, can be highly subjective. I do say this mostly tongue in cheek though I have an old friend in the humanities at Yale who once seriously suggested psychology is not a scientific endeavor. Certainly psychiatry is a science at least, but the explication of scientific ‘truth' here leaves much to the imagination. The film itself begins with Nazis and ends with witch hunts. This is highbrow ressentiment on full display. Ever since Charles Manson hit the scene, intellectuals can't get enough of conflating victims and murderers. My position on this is that the question was decided by Primo Levi - the victims of murderers, no matter how many hypothetical ‘what if' mind games one cares to play, are not the same as the murderers themselves. Dorothy Otnow Lewis is a psychiatrist but by the end of the film admits she identifies with the witches burned at the stake both in old movies and reality. The filmmakers are stretching here to cast Lewis as some kind of visionary heretic but the truth of this film appears to be that she is mostly (even if not entirely) a hired gun for anti-death penalty litigators. This is a bit unfair and even cynical of me perhaps, yes. Still I find it fascinating that legal crusaders can, on the one hand, find that police (through suggestive interview techniques) will elicit false confessions, but yet can also present these "scientific" interview techniques of Lewis as valid and unimpeachable. Indeed while interviewing a professional executioner in his trailer park home, the presentation of elite class hopes for a better world juxtaposed with working class reality could not be more harsh yet even more invisible. Lewis is quite ready to judge people if it fits her theory. When the mother of Ted Bundy remarks that she can't wait for this whole thing to be over, this is seen as evidence of Bundy's abusive childhood. The possibility that this is a candid and very human response to tragedy is not considered by Lewis or the filmmakers, who offer only a judgmental ‘tut tut' from Lewis. The documentary does offer moments of counter-perspective but always framed as establishment types who are pro-death penalty. Ultimately, this film doesn't know what it wants to be. Is it about serial killers? Not really. Is it a scientific exploration of what makes people kill? Sort of. Is it a character study of Dorothy Otnow Lewis? To a degree. The only thing I can say with certainty is that the film advocates against the death penalty, yet even here, the film cannot escape its own contradictions. While suggesting that the death penalty is a ‘return to the dark ages', it begins by pointing out that in those same dark ages the mentally ill were not executed because madness was deemed punishment enough. Like dueling experts in a jury trial, I would suggest that viewers will take what they want from this haphazard and clumsy piece of work. If you are opposed to the death penalty already, there is nothing to change your mind in this movie. If you already have HBO, I'm sure this will be a deep and meaningful exploration of our unjust society in action. Personally I want my money back. I found it on the whole an unconvincing and mundane exploration of the anti-death penalty movement through the lens of one psychiatrist's rather scattered and unfocused body of work. Was Ted Bundy the product of incest? No, but Lewis is disappointed about that. How does this relate to her other work with brain damaged killers? She admits Bundy did not have severe brain damage. Certainly the suggestion that Bundy was dissociative is interesting. Are people born evil? Perhaps not. Is the legal system perfect? Of course not. Is that reason enough to ban the death penalty? I don't necessarily think so. Do psychiatrists make mistakes? Apparently so. Is David Cross at all connected with this movie? Aside from my guess that he is opposed to the death penalty, no. Are we entering the new dark age? Wait and see.

This was an eye-opening documentary, well put together, cogent and fascinating, on how serial killers come about. Dr. Dorothy Otnow Lewis was a knowledgeable and empathic descriptor, showing audio and/or footage of interviews with serial killers along with more of the story. It was a completely unforgettable take on the forensics of the underlying foundation of the serial killer personality and process.

intriguing and educational

One of the poorer-made documentaries, lacking in detail and actual case evidence. Instead the the entire film was led by narration from Dr Lewis, who I didn't find very convincing in her case assessments or psych explanations.

Regardless of whether you agree with Dorothy's assertions or the topic as a whole, it is an extremely interesting documentary and definitely worth watching.

SUPER interesting look into the minds of serial killers