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“…there is an idea of a Patrick Bateman, some kind of abstraction, but there is no real me, only an entity, something illusory, and though I can hide my cold gaze and you can shake my hand and feel flesh gripping yours and maybe you can even sense our lifestyles are probably comparable: I simply am not there.”

Bret Easton Ellis, author of the controversial book American Psycho (1991) puts forward the thought that mind and body are distinct. The quote I shall be discussing is one of the protagonists’ (Patrick Bateman’s) key self-analysis, in which he believes that even though he physically exists, he is nothing more than an illusion and an abstraction.

Bateman’s feelings of absence are reinforced by his numerous internal monologues, this quote being one of them. I will use Rene Descartes’ meditations along with the concept of the self in order to differentiate between mind and body, and to conclude whether Bateman is really not there.

Firstly I will look at the concept of the self. Self-analysis is the first step to understand who you are, and self-conceptualization is a cognitive component of oneself. Once one is fully aware of oneself, that person then has a concept of himself/herself. This concept is usually broken down into two parts: The Existential

Self and The Categorical Self.

The existential self is the sense we get of being different from those around us, and the realization of the constancy of the self. The categorical self is when one realizes that he or she is distinct as well as an object in this world, thus having properties that may be experienced, just like any other object. Bateman is convinced that there only exists an idea of himself but no real him, nonetheless what can we define ‘an idea’ to 2

be?

Descartes defines an ‘idea’ to be “a mode of thought” - a means in which an instance of thought is established. Descartes’ meditations lead him to his view on the

“self” and defining oneself. We shall now look further into Descartes’ three doubts:

Sense Perception, Dream/Reality distinction and The Evil Deceiver.

Descartes’ states that everything he has accepted as true, he has either learned through or from the senses, however he is aware that the senses are deceptive. Sense

Perception is a way of knowing, yet if the senses may deceive us, then we should not fully trust them. For instance, the fact that Bateman knows people can shake his hand and feel his flesh does not necessarily mean that Bateman exists, since his senses may be deceiving him. The word “senses” in Bateman’s internal monologue emphasizes the importance of the senses in defining who he really is. In Descartes’ first meditation, he seeks to found human knowledge on the secure foundations of those truths that we can work out through reason alone, and not through our senses which are deceptive. Patrick

Bateman’s senses may be misleading him into believing things that may not be really happening. This, in turn, leads us to the Dream/Reality distinction.

When we dream, we process the events and actions that occur within the dream as real, and we are only aware that we would have been dreaming once we wake up, therefore discovering those events to occur in our dream as false. However, if we cannot sense that we are dreaming when we are dreaming, how do we know when we are awake? Descartes argues that we do not realize when we are in a dream and we often have the same perceptions in a dream as we have in what we refer to as ‘awake’. Events and images that occur within our dreams are built upon ideas in our minds, such as innate and adventitious ideas. Generally, our dreams consist of invented ideas, which 3

consist of combinations that we create ourselves of two or more ideas. There are no clear signs to distinguish the dream experience from the waking experience, even though we are conscious of the fact that any image to appear in a dream is an idea of objects in reality.

Bateman tells himself that he is “simply not there”, even though one can physically come into contact with his body. This may be a reference to the fact that he is dreaming, and therefore, isn’t mentally there but lost in his dream. There are many scenes that exhibit possible sense deception in American Psycho. One scene that makes the reader question Bateman’s state of mind is when he is at an ATM and upon noticing a cat, sees the words, “Feed Me A Stray Cat” on the screen of the ATM, and proceeds to do so. This event may easily be the product of a dream or his sense of sight deceiving him. If Patrick Bateman truly is in a dream state, he is undoubtedly unaware and believes that he is awake. Could his senses be deceiving him to the extent that he cannot distinguish which events are really taking place and which are a figment of his imagination? Possibly, but even if he is in fact dreaming, what may he define himself as?

If Bateman claims that there only exists an idea of a Patrick Bateman, then this idea needs to derive from somewhere in order for there to exist an abstraction on this idea. This brings about the existence of other beings or ideas that resemble Patrick

Bateman; other human beings. Descartes’ is yet to define what he is, or any other being for that matter. If there is an idea of something known as Patrick Bateman, then what is that something?

Descartes, as he begins his second meditation, is certain that he may doubt everything there is to doubt, except the fact that he is doubting. Some object or thing 4

must be doubting, which Descartes believes to be himself. Therefore, he concludes that since he is doubting, he has to exist, “Cogito Ergo Sum” (I think therefore I am). The

‘I’ is a doubting thing. Patrick Bateman is doubting his physical existence, and if we relate this to Descartes’ meditations, we may say that Patrick Bateman does in fact exist as a thinking thing, nevertheless we are yet to find out if there is more to him, or if he simply is an abstraction; an entity.

We are certain that we cannot be deceived about our existence as a thinking thing, that is a mind, soul or intellect, but our knowledge of those objects around us may be false. The existence of individuals as thinking things is strengthened by Descartes’ argument of the wax. If wax melts, all its properties that we perceive through our senses change, yet it is still the same exact piece of wax. Both ‘forms’ of the same wax contain the idea of wax, thus the knowledge of wax is attained through our intellect. From this, we can say that our mind is more clearly and distinctly known to us than our body.

There is no correct definition of what our body truly is, but Descartes understands it to be “anything that can be limited by shape, circumscribed in a place and fill a space that all other bodies are excluded from. It can perceived by touch, sight, hearing, taste/smell and may be moved by whatever else touches it.” Bateman has a clear and distinct perception of himself as a thinking thing, as does Descartes by the third meditation. The possibility of deception presents the idea of a benevolent and superior being to us; God. To negate the likelihood of deception, Descartes attempts to prove the existence of God, who may be the Evil Deceiver – the last of Descartes’ doubts.

According to Descartes, he [a thinking thing] is born with innate ideas, which are supposedly not tainted by other things, such as the idea of a perfect circle. These innate ideas are the result of an infinite and perfect source which we refer to as God – superior 5

perfect being. Descartes moves on to find out whether he may have created the source for these innate ideas. He is aware of his own imperfections, and argues that this requires an idea of perfection. This idea must originate from something or someone which has at least as much perfection as the notion itself. Therefore, there must exist a perfect cause for the idea of perfection, which we call God. Descartes’ refers to this as the Trademark Argument. Descartes rules out the possibility of these innate ideas being false since God cannot be a deceiver “since it is manifest by the natural light that all fraud and deception depend on some defect”, and God’s perfection implies the nihility of any defect or imperfection.

Up until now, we know that Patrick Bateman undeniably exists as a thinking thing and may in fact be dreaming – though that does not deny his existence. Descartes, in his final two meditations, wishes to discover the essence of material objects through a rational approach as opposed to an empirical approach. Firstly, essence is those qualities that make an object what it is. Descartes, as well as Bateman, may clearly and distinctly perceive the property of material things, known as extension; therefore material things exist. Here we come to see that Bateman may exist as a thinking thing separate from an extension; a body. The Ontological Argument argues that God’s essence is distinct to that of other ideas and includes all perfections, which in turn include existence, making existence a necessary property of God. Once we are aware that God exists and is not an evil deceiver, then anything we see as clear and distinct is true.

According to Descartes, we can conclude that Patrick Bateman exists as a thinking thing and cannot distinguish between dreams and reality. Those things that

Bateman perceives as clear and distinct are true since God is benevolent and not an evil deceiver. Bateman’s words give the impression that he believes that he only exists as a 6

thinking thing and not as a physical being, without an extension. Descartes argues that human beings move and act on two different levels, mentally and physically. Patrick

Bateman considers himself not to truly exist or not to be complete. As we have seen, if an object does not consist of all the properties that form an ‘idea’ of that object, then it is not considered to be that object.

According to Jean-Paul Sartre, human beings are fundamentally different from objects in that they are initially simply there, and only later identify themselves. There exist two kinds of transcendence of the phenomenon of being; that of being and of consciousness, defining the two categories of being: the in-itself (non-conscious being) and the for-itself (conscious being) respectively. Sartre establishes that if something perceives, there must be a consciousness doing the perceiving. He presents the in-itself as existing without reason, independently of the for-itself. The for-itself is characterized by a lack of identity with itself, perceived as a nothingness of Being. If there exists nothing besides consciousness - nothing of which it can be conscious of, then it ceases to exist. Thus, the for-itself is undetermined and entirely free to become through its actions. Patrick Bateman is unable to distinguish between those actions that occur in his dream-like state or reality, thus lacking consciousness. For Sartre, Bateman would not be a complete Being since the being for-itself does not exist.

“There is an idea of Patrick Bateman, some kind of abstraction, but there is no real me” - Bateman is certainly a thinking thing, however we are still unsure on whether there exists an extension of his mind; a body. The fact that he is continuously mistaken for Marcus Halberstram (a businessman working at the same firm who does the same job that Bateman does) reinforces the possibility that Bateman may physically not exist as a Patrick Bateman, but as an ‘idea’, and is thus confused with Mr Halberstram since they are so alike. 7

We can therefore conclude that Ellis’ unique character, Patrick Bateman, does not have a true concept of self, owing to the fact that he is unaware that his senses often deceive him and is unable to distinguish between reality and the dream state.

Consequently, he doubts his own existence, and by doing this he exists as a thinking thing, clearly proving his existence as a thinking thing.

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Bibliography:

Daigle, Christin. "Sartre’s Being & Nothingness: The Bible of Existentialism?" Sartre’s

Being & Nothingness: The Bible of Existentialism? N.p., n.d. Web. 21 Jan.

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Descartes, René, Desmond M. Clarke, René Descartes, and René Descartes.

Meditations and Other Metaphysical Writings. London: Penguin, 1998. Print.

Ellis, Bret Easton. American Psycho: A Novel. New York: Vintage, 1991. Print.

"Jean Paul Sartre: Existentialism." Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. N.p., n.d.

Web. 22 Jan. 2015. .

Schaffer, Christopher. "Examining the Personality of Patrick Bateman of American

Psycho." Examining the Personality of Patrick Bateman of American Psycho

(n.d.): 4-5. Academia.edu. Web. 13 June 2014.