Abstract

In the present study, I analyze a genre of fiction that is relatively recent. One of the domineering themes occurring in transgressive fiction is mental illness as manifested through its protagonists. Using the fifth edition of “Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders” (DSM-V), the article attempts to diagnose and subsequently compare the mental disorders of two serial killers from two novels: Iain Banks’ “The Wasp Factory” (1984) and Bret Easton Ellis’ “American Psycho” (1991). While Banks’ Francis Cauldhame is a genuine example of a person with paranoid schizophrenia (PS) with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), Ellis’s character of Patrick Bateman is also mistakenly interpreted as schizophrenic; however, he manifests symptoms of three distinctive mental disorders compiled in the B cluster of personality disorders: antisocial personality disorder (ASPD), borderline personality disorder (BPD), and histrionic personality disorder (HPD).