Perry Smith The Serene Man With The

Perry Smith: The Serene Man With The Explosive Temper Essay, Research Paper

Perry Smith: The Serene Man with the Explosive Temper

Perry Smith is perhaps the nicest, most gentle-hearted man I’ve ever met in my life. If he and I were to have met under different circumstances, I would never have hazarded a guess that this kind man could be a cold-blooded killer. He’s such a gentle man that it startles me to think that a man such as he would ever so much as touch a hair on a human head. However, it is the story of his past that lends credence to the fact that he slaughtered four members of the Clutter family. Built up emotions of hatred and rejection have been bottled up inside of him for so long, that he sometimes explodes with little cause. Although he appears soft on the outside, it is the build up of emotion within that causes him to behave so irregularly and explode without warning. Perry Smith’s troubled personality comes as a result of the polarities of his two sides.

As an experienced psychiatrist, I have dealt with many cases such as this case involving Perry Smith. I have diagnosed personality disorders such as schizophrenia, and I believe that Perry shows several signs of this disorder. My diagnosis comes from the fact that Perry has emotional reactions that are unpredictable and inappropriate, he has disturbed relationships, and he acts withdrawn, always “a loner without any real friends.” His inability to communicate with his family is a warning sign of schizophrenia. Poverty and a disorganized family life are often looked at as causes of the disorder; Perry Smith’s family was not, by any means, wealthy, and they were unarguably disorganized. Perry Smith has a split personality; he’s a schizophrenic.

Perry’s schizophrenia seems to stem from a disturbed childhood and erratic family life. Perry had a normal birth, and he remembers his childhood as “treasurable- a fragment composed of applause, glamour.” His early childhood was comfortable, but having rodeo performers for parents took its toll on the lives of Perry and his siblings. They enjoyed seeing their parents perform, but they were forced to live in a truck with little to eat as they traveled the country hunting work on the rodeo circuit. During the Depression in the 1930s, the family moved to Nevada in search of work. Tex John Smith, Perry’s father, began moonshining for money. It was around this time that Flo Buckskin, Perry’s mother, began drinking. The marriage ended in a huge fight “in which horsewhips and scalding water and kerosene lamps were used as weapons.” Flo ran away with the children. John later went to San Francisco to get his children back. Perry was the only one that showed any love for his father.

After the divorce, John was granted full custody, but he took only Perry and put the other children in foster care because he could not care for all of them. Perry got into trouble in school and was in a fight. His father summarily removed him from the school, and they left town. Perry says that although he wanted to go to school, his father wouldn’t let him, “because he didn’t want [him] to learn anything, only how to tote and carry for him.” Perry joined the Marines in the Second World War, and he went to Korea, where he displayed signs of his sinister side by throwing a Korean man over a bridge for no reason. He returned from the war and went to find his father in Alaska, where they built the Trapper’s Den Lodge. John began to blame his son for the unsuccessful business venture. They got into a fight which ultimately ended their relationship. They got into a fight over a biscuit. They yelled at each other, and John said he didn’t want Perry to stay with him anymore. Perry grabbed John by the neck, and John threatened to kill Perry with a shotgun. Perry returned to the house later that night after a walk to find all of his possessions in the snow. His father had thrown him out of his house.

Perry’s mother died as a result of alcohol abuse, choking on her own vomit. Perry’s sister Fern, whom he’d loved dearly, jumped out of a hotel window after drinking a bottle of whiskey. His brother Jimmy, whom Perry had admired for graduating from high school and being top in his class, shot himself after accusing his wife of promiscuity to the point that she took her own life with a gunshot to the forehead. The trauma caused by suicide and death in his family, along with the strained relationship between him and his father, whom he’d once loved, is the main cause of Perry’s schizophrenia. The pain that he endured during his adolescence, his hatred for Bobo, his older sister who wouldn’t help him when he was in jail, the loss of half of his family, and his father is what causes him to break away from his kind-hearted appearance and occasionally snap. When Perry snaps, and the hatred and rejection within him surface, anything is liable to happen.

Most people see him as kind and gentle, but only those who get truly close to Perry Smith can see his other side. Perry’s deranged accomplice, Dick Hickock, saw something wrong with Perry. In my interview with Dick Hickock, he revealed to me that he saw several sides to Perry Smith. As a cellmate, Dick saw how Perry could be “such a kid.wetting his bed and crying in his sleep.” Dick also saw the side of Perry that was “spooky as hell.” Part of this side of Perry was his temper. Perry could “slide into a fury ‘quicker than