Hey Pandora! Psychiatrist's Opinion Needed on Grizzly Man

[joeychitwood]

I watched Grizzly Man this weekend, the story of self-styled bear expert Timothy Treadwell and his life and death in Alaska's brown bear feeding grounds.

The documentary by Werner Herzog won a major award at the Sundance Film Festival in 2005. It blends a few interviews with friends of Treadwell, a coroner and bush pilots who discovered and recovered Treadwell's body with Treadwells' own video shot over the last few years of his life. It is very well done.

Throughout the film, I found myself asking "What's wrong with this guy?" He completely disregarded the boundaries between humans and wild predators. He personalized and humanized the bears, foxes and other wildlife he found. He seemed grandiose, yet sincere and incredibly naive, delusional at times, yet not psychotic.

Throughout the film, Treadwell talks about the inherant risks with much bravado and detail, yet it is obvious that he never really believed that anything could happen to him. Ultimately, after 13 summers living among the bears, he and his girlfriend were attacked and eaten by a bear.

My question for the official RC psychiatrists who might have seen the film is this: what was wrong with this guy? He had a history or alcoholism and chemical dependency which he says was cured by living with the bears. What disorder leads someone to be so incredibly narcissistic, delusional, needy, sincere, hostile and persistent all at once?

[DizziDezi2]

I personally tink he was on drugs. What....possibly meth: he was always scratching, in another world, but he was a bit loud to be on it.... pills are another good scenario- loratabs not anything like O.C. but drugs he was on for sure. Plus he was just CRAZY.... i'm not a doctor but if i had to guess a disorder i'd sya borderline personality. He needs the world but hates it.

[joeychitwood]

Interesting, DizziDezi2. I was thinking Borderline Personality Disorder myself as I watched the movie. While about 10% of those with BPD eventually commit suicide, the one fact which confuses me is that most seem to "burn out" and get somewhat better in their mid-thirties and early forties.

[BrianD]

I have read quite a few articles about this guy, and the only thing that surprised the "bear experts" was that it took him that long to become a bear buffet.

[Fat Man]

I didn't watch the entire thing; I just caught the interview with the curator of the native museum and a clip of the guy in the water with a wild bear. That was all I felt I needed to form an opinion of the guy; he was a first class idiot. I don't know much about him. He strikes me as an environmentalist/nature lover (this in and of itself is not a bad thing) from an urban area. These are the type that feel they must interact with nature, but do so without knowing their own role. His actions in the water with the bear demonstrated that he had no clear understanding of wildlife behavior, much less the behavior of one of the largest land carnivores on earth today. He may have had years of observation but he saw nothing.

[Mr Neutron]

Maybe he watched too much tv in the 70's.

http://www.nostalgiacentral.com/images_tv/grizzly_01.jpg

[chilyb56]

according to wikipedia, he was a former drug addict... and actor

[Nina51]

i watched it from start to finish mainly because i was trying, myself, to figure out what this guy was about. the only conclusion i could reach was that he was both naive and the years of drug abuse burned up pretty much all of his brain cells.

as one interviewee said, the only real shame was that he took his girlfriend down with him.

[Blindmelonbob]

Sad that 6 bears were poached the year after his death and none had been during his summers there. I admire the guy for trying to protect them and doing something he so firmly believed in, but I definitely think he was dealing with a mental illness, too.

[catdoc]

We were discussing this documentary at work today--I haven't seen it all yet, but even in the brief portion I saw, he was definitely "off". I'm anxious to see the rest, but have a feeling I won't get the answers!

[Mr Neutron]

I don't agree he 'took his girlfriend down'; she could have left any time she felt like it. She had admitted openly to being scared of bears, and had the chance to get on a plane and leave right before this happened, yet chose to stay. Sounds like dumb and dumber to me.

[kfisc]

As a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, I can say that as far as DSM-IV classification goes, the categories are rarely if ever cut and dried when diagnosing anyone. My hunch is he was struggling with a dual diagnosis of Paranoid Schizophrenia with severe Narcissistic Personality Disorder, and probably something or other else in the psychotic realm, induced or of an organic etiology.

Kernberg, Gunderson, Mahler and the others who originated the terms used in the DSM IV essentially held that Narcissism, Borderline and other P.D. categories were variant results of injuries/traumas suffered in infancy and childhood; as it stands now, we know the influence of nature and nurture has only begun to be examined.

From my clinical experience, this guy is typical of a fair number of folks who come in, the difference being they don't film themselves while contending with bears.

fwiw.......

[Pandora]

Hey joey, just saw this post, you always come up with interesting ones. :) Having never seen documentary, I feel ill prepared to comment on a diagnosis... I predict my Tivo will get a warmup! Is it airing on TV?

From what you're describing so far... I'd agree he's got *at least* a personality disorder. As kfisc mentioned, they're not clear cut categories... this is the fascinating thing about them also, as many of us can recognize characteristics of ourselves that fall into each one. All the self-importance and bravado you talk about line up well with the Cluster B's... antisocial, narcissisic, etc... but some of the odd, solitary behavior, and inability to empathize with other humans... could put him in with a Cluster A type too, with the schizoids & schizotypal.

So that he's got some sort of PD probably goes without saying. Whether or not he is truly psychotic and has an Axis I disorder, I guess we could only speculate based on the limited history in the documentary, which I haven't even seen. :) He does sound delusional in many ways. You don't have to completely lose touch with reality to fall under a class of some psychotic disorder, you'd be surprised at how many psychotic patients will be very logical in other areas of thought.

This all reminds me of some difficulty in classifying "animal hoarders"... you know, the ones who have like 100 cats in a 2 bedroom apt. They tried to explain these tendencies through models of dementia, addictions and zoophilia... but I think the most parsimonious one, by a guy named Lockwood, may have been tied to OCD. The obsession is with imagined harm that could come to the animals if not under their care, and the compulsion is the unrealistic ritualistic hoarding behavior. I would say it's safe to say even without watching this that this guy probably has some obsessive tendencies that lead to his compulsions to live side by side with them.

Not to mention a lot of attachment issues from childhood, no doubt... I'd have to dig into my college psych books for "wild child" case histories, but there's probably at least a few parallel's to be drawn there. Interesting stuff!

[Pandora]

One other thought... Asperger's Syndrome. Some consider it a very mild form of Autism. Many of these guys grow up and are never formerly diagnosed; have trouble relating to other people, but become obsessed with animals (animal therapy works very well here). Some think it is very underdiagnosed, because most are highly functional and intelligent. Just a thought, though he seems more out there from the description alone.

[joeychitwood]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=6681826#post6681826 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Pandora
This all reminds me of some difficulty in classifying "animal hoarders"...... The obsession is with imagined harm that could come to the animals if not under their care, and the compulsion is the unrealistic ritualistic hoarding behavior. I would say it's safe to say even without watching this that this guy probably has some obsessive tendencies that lead to his compulsions to live side by side with them. Interesting! Treadwell repeatedly talk and rants about how he is protecting the bears from perceived poachers, although it's pointed out by the director/narrator Herzog that poaching had not been a problem prior to Treadwell residing with the bears.

The movie is available on DVD, and it was shown last week on the Discovery Channel. I'd highly recommend it to you. I think you'd be fascinated by the behavior and thought patterns of Treadwell.

[Pandora]

I'm blanking on this one... it's a psych term for attempting to psychoanalyse someone without actually talking with them first hand, and getting the entire history from a secondhand account, or another medium such as television. I know there was a guy who tried to do this in a book "Bush on the Couch". The ultimate telemedicine...

[kfisc]

You mean that Thing Freud started when he analyzed famous people? And whaddya know, Freud's great grandaughter, Emma Freud, is a TV producer....


http://www.jla.co.uk/images/Artists/FreudEmma1P.jpg

[Pandora]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=6682761#post6682761 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by kfisc
You mean that Thing Freud started when he analyzed famous people? And whaddya know, Freud's great grandaughter, Emma Freud, is a TV producer....


Hehe, didn't know that. And yeah, I think Freud started it, but I've seen it more in pop culture lately... pop psych I guess you could call it... that book, Bush on the Couch, was a bit of a stretch, all politics aside...

[mickey85]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=6681937#post6681937 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Pandora
One other thought... Asperger's Syndrome. Some consider it a very mild form of Autism. Many of these guys grow up and are never formerly diagnosed; have trouble relating to other people, but become obsessed with animals (animal therapy works very well here). Some think it is very underdiagnosed, because most are highly functional and intelligent. Just a thought, though he seems more out there from the description alone.

Many people have told me that they think I have asperger's. I really don't like people, yet I have 6 fish tanks in my 10X20 ft 2 person dorm room. Besides, IQ - 137. SAT - 1350. ACT - 27. average GPA as a junior in a private college as an education major - 3.7, and I very rarely study.


And real harm would come from fish not in my care. If I have to give them up to an LFS, the LFS worker could kill them, or they could go in a tank that's way too small with way too many fish and die a nasty death.

Oh well...I guess everything is a mental illness...

[Pandora]

I think there are times when many of us here like our fish better than people. And agree that real harm awaits them at the LFS. :D