The Psychology of the Joker EXPLAINED

Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we’re taking a deep dive into the inner psyche of one of Batman’s most twisted villains. We’ll be looking at all things Joker, so consider this your spoiler warning.

The Insanity Situation  

It wouldn’t be a comprehensive exploration of the Joker’s mind without focusing on several important aspects of the character. Whether you’re a seasoned scholar or completely clueless, something that pretty much everybody knows is that the Joker is one crazy supervillain. He’s an unhinged force of nature that has taken Batman to town and brought Gotham to its knees. It’s safe to say that the Clown Prince of Crime is the posterboy for insanity. Or…is he? With the Joker, insanity is a little complicated. Martian Manhunter once telepathically peered into his brain and temporarily turned him from insane to sane. But then there were also times when Joker was just faking the illness. So what’s the deal with this crazy clown then? Is he actually insane or not? Ok, you’re probably expecting an answer to the question, and the truth is…well…we’ll get back to you on that! 
 
The Trickster & the Shadow
What we can say for certain though is that Joker is clearly modeled off of two distinct Jungian archetypes. No need to dust off that old Psych 101 textbook, we’re going to explain what this means. Carl Jung, a controversial yet renowned psychologist, came up with a list of several different archetypes. Archetypes are a complex concept but we can boil them down to being types of identities representing common traits and characteristics found in people. Many of these archetypes more or less shape the world around us. Of the many Jungian archetypes, two are known as the trickster and the shadow. The trickster is the character who doesn’t play by the rules. They don’t adhere to logic or rationality. They can lie, cheat, and steal, but they also like to have fun. In stories, they typically take great enjoyment from messing with the protagonist. Ultimately they’re people who go against the grain. With an archetype that’s called the trickster it’s hard not to see how it relates to the Joker. But Joker isn’t just jokes though, there’s more sinister stuff that lurks underneath the surface. That’s where Jung’s concept of the shadow comes in. The shadow is our darker impulses, our negative thoughts, our pent-up aggressions, basically the part of our inner psyche that we block out. They’re the version of yourself who wants to cheat on your exams, cut in the front of the line, and burn down the DMV. They’re the evil we could be, that we know we never should be. While shadows are risky business, Jung also stresses that they’re aspects of ourselves that we need to acknowledge so long as we don’t embrace them. But if someone gives into those darker impulses and drinks the Kool-Aid that their shadow is offering, then you’ve got chaos…
 
The Agent of Chaos 
When tricksters and shadows represent chaos, then the agent at their disposal is Heath Ledger’s Joker. His appearance in “The Dark Knight” grabbed the audience’s attention within seconds. To call him a villain feels like a disservice to the character because he’s clearly way more than that. This version of the Joker represents pure anarchy, and we’re not just saying that to sound cool. He plays his henchmen against themselves, waltzes his way into mobster meetings, burns all of his money, and pisses off Batman. In an interview with “The New York Times”, Ledger himself used words like “psychopathic” and “schizophrenic” to describe his Joker. And when watching him it’s definitely not hard to see some of those traits at play. He incites and encourages violence, utterly corrupts Harvey Dent, and turns the city against Batman in the end. His whole manifesto is to cause Gotham to come crashing down to his level. He wants to expose everyone for the hypocrites he sees them as, and rules are just restraints for him to take away. So for the Joker, chaos reigns supreme.
   
The Broken Loner
If Christopher Nolan’s “The Dark Knight” opens with a Joker who is incredibly powerful, then Todd Phillips’ “Joker” opens with a Joker who is incredibly powerless. That’s the whole thing about Arthur Fleck, he’s a man at his wit’s end. He’s picked on, disrespected, stricken with poverty, and ultimately alone. He’s essentially a punching bag for all of Gotham. Themes surrounding mental illness are also at the forefront of this version of the character. At various times he suffers from spontaneous and uncontrollable laughing fits. While the movie never outright states his condition, it’s likely pseudobulbar affect. It’s a real-life rare disorder that causes people to laugh uncontrollably at random. Arthur also shows signs of depression. To combat it he regularly takes multiple medications and attends meetings with a social worker. Nothing really works though, and when social services get their funding cut, it leaves Arthur high and dry. He also experiences delusions, like how he makes up an entire romance with his neighbor Sophie in his head, which suggests he could be living with schizophrenia. It’s all of these factors that boil over until Arthur finally snaps against society and the Joker is born. Believing that he’s been persecuted long enough, his lifelong feelings of inadequacy fester until he’s now seemingly embraced his own madness.
   
An Infectious Madness 
Once you’re mad, you’ve got to share that madness with others, and Joker does this a lot when he infects people with his toxin. The deadly gas typically makes people laugh until they die, leaving sickly smiles plastered onto their faces. He can also charm his way onto people, and Harley Quinn is probably the greatest example of that. Though their relationship has become toxic over the years, in its heyday they were an impactful supervillain power couple. The dynamic between them is a pretty good example of folie à deux. If that phrase sounds familiar, that’s because it’s also the name for the second “Joker” movie. But what is it? In the most literal translation it means ‘madness for two’ in French. It’s when two people close to each other share similar delusions and it starts when one of them picks up these beliefs directly from the other. The condition has never explicitly been associated with the two until now, but there’s still a lot more here. More specifically, another case of folie à deux could exist between the Joker and…another Joker? For fans of “Gotham”, the Batman-prequel series that ran on Fox, the Valeska Twins were practically cult icons. Jerome was the psychopathic prankster while Jeremiah was the stoic sadist, and they were essentially both Joker, just different aspects of him. Sure, several clashes with copyright prevented “Gotham” from calling either of them the Joker outright, but even if they were just proto-versions, it’s clear that madness ran in their family. Given how folie à deux works, they’re a good example of the disorder, too. Before dying, Jerome rigged a jack-in-the-box which infected Jeremiah. He would downplay the effects of the spray and claim that he was actually always disturbed, but the exposure clearly did something. One way or another, though, Joker’s like a disease you don’t want to catch.  
 
Super Sanity
You may have heard Joker once describe himself as “ahead of the curve”, and well, you really don’t know how true that is. Considering the character has been around for more than eighty years, it’s only fitting that writers would offer their own interpretations on what the Joker’s deal is. One of the most well-known writers to throw their hat into the ring is Grant Morrison. In their “Arkham Asylum” graphic novel, the term “super sanity” is coined by Joker’s therapist. It’s a condition she speculates he may have. Through the lens of super sanity, he doesn’t process the world in the same way we do. The unconventional way in which he absorbs information results in his often sporadic behavior. He switches his personality depending on whatever fits the current circumstances. With super sanity, it argues that Joker is so sane that we just can’t quite understand it. If we were to go to the most extreme end, it could even mean that he’s self aware. If that’s true, then he knows about the fourth wall and his role as a fictional character. That’s right, he could be like an even more unhinged Deadpool if he really wanted to. But beyond these implications, his heightened state of mind has been expanded upon. Chip Zdarsky’s “Batman” run gave updates to Joker’s lore, and possibly connected it back to the super sanity concept. Specifically, a retcon was made which revealed that Joker received training from one of Batman’s own mentors: Daniel Captio, who helped him to broaden his mind’s capabilities. Through Captio’s teachings, he was able to learn how to create three different yet equally destructive personalities of himself to exist within his consciousness. The long short is that Joker essentially learned how to weaponize his own brain and pick-and-choose his blends of crazy. We’ll admit that the comic doesn’t exactly label this as him utilizing his super sanity, but the ability for him to adapt his consciousness on a large scale draws clear parallels to the condition. Heck, Captio himself even calls Joker’s mind superhuman so there’s definitely something there. 
  
Diagnosis…Maybe: 
At the start of this video essay, we asked an important question. Is the Joker actually insane? And after everything we’ve been over, we can say that the answer is…probably not. We know, it sounds shocking, but there’s a lot that goes into deeming someone insane. Just think of it from a legal standpoint for starters. For most states in America, you need to pass the M'naghten Rule to be deemed criminally insane. It’s basically a benchmark to figure out if a person is fully in control of themselves and/or has a firm grasp of right and wrong. If it’s clear that they don’t, then they can be considered legally insane. Joker would need to meet atleast two of this rule’s three conditions to have that happen. But since he’s both aware of his own actions and the immorality of them then he’d likely fail and be deemed sane. He can be pretty psychopathic, sure, but he doesn’t really show signs of psychosis, meaning he knows what he’s getting up to. So what’s the deal then? What does he have? Well, we can pretty much guarantee that he’s kind of a cocktail of conditions, a hodgepodge of this-and-that but nothing definitive. In the “Batman: Arkham” franchise, Dr. Young did a full psychological profile on him. He showed signs of multiple conditions like narcissistic, borderline, and antisocial personality disorder. However, she stressed earlier in the profile that Joker’s deranged behavior made classifying him as something difficult. He’s a mixture of lots of serious issues but we can probably never truly pinpoint an exact disorder. You can take a look at him in any form of media he’s shown up in and take a guess, but nothing conclusive has been shared. In all honesty, that’s probably the way DC wants it to be. Joker is a fictional character which also means he’s bound to get contradicted. As more stories involving him get told, the lines will only start to blur more. We can’t quite diagnose him like he’s a real person since his state of mind can always change on a whim by writers and editors. But there’s a silver lining though, the uncertainty of what exactly he is adds to the character’s intrigue. Not quite knowing what goes on in his brain gives him an unpredictable edge that has made him one of the greatest supervillains of all time. 
 
Are there any special concepts related to the Joker you think we missed? Give us your breakdown in the comments!