Patrick Bateman is a fictional character created by novelist Bret Easton Ellis. He is the villain protagonist and unreliable narrator of Ellis's 1991 novel American Psycho and is played by Christian Bale in the 2000 film adaptation of the same name.
Bateman is a wealthy and materialistic yuppie and Wall Street investment banker who, supposedly, leads a secret life as a serial killer.
American Psycho movie poster featuring Christian Bale as Patrick Bateman.
Early Life and Background
Bateman was born on 23 October 1961 and comes from a wealthy family. His parents have a house on Long Island, and he mentions a summer house in Newport. His parents divorced sometime earlier, and his mother resides at a sanatorium.
His father, who first appeared in Ellis's preceding novel The Rules of Attraction, grew up on an estate in Connecticut, and now owns an apartment in the Carlyle Hotel in Manhattan. In Mary Harron's 2000 adaptation, however, it is mentioned that Bateman's father "practically owns" the company that Bateman works at, implying that Bateman's father is still alive.
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Bateman's younger brother Sean attends Camden College and is a protagonist of The Rules of Attraction, in which Patrick Bateman was first introduced. Bateman attended prominent Phillips Exeter Academy for prep school.
The Yuppie Persona
At the beginning of American Psycho, Bateman is a 27-year-old successful specialist in mergers and acquisitions with the fictitious Wall Street investment firm of Pierce & Pierce (also Sherman McCoy's firm in The Bonfire of the Vanities). He lives at 55 West 81st Street on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, on the 11th floor of the American Gardens Building, where he is a neighbor of actor Tom Cruise.
As written by Ellis, Bateman is the ultimate stereotype of yuppie greed - wealthy, superficial, obsessed with status, and addicted to sex, drugs, and conspicuous consumption. All of his friends look alike to him, to the point that he often confuses one for another.
Bateman is engaged to an equally wealthy, shallow woman named Evelyn Williams and has a mistress on the side named Courtney Lawrence, the girlfriend of Luis Carruthers, a closeted homosexual whom Bateman despises. He has regular liaisons with prostitutes and women he encounters at clubs, many of whom end up being his victims.
The one woman and possibly the only person in his life for whom he has anything approaching feelings is his secretary, Jean. He feels that she is the only person in his life who is not completely shallow, so he cannot bring himself to seduce or kill her.
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Despite his affluence and high social status, Bateman is constantly plagued by unsettling feelings of anxiety and low self-esteem. He kills many of his victims because they make him feel inadequate, usually by having better taste than he does. He is hated by others as much as he hates them; his friends mock him as the "boy next door", his own lawyer refers to him as a "bloody ass-kisser... a brown-nosing goody-goody", and he is often dismissed as "yuppie trash" by people outside his social circle.
The Serial Killer
In his secret life, Bateman is a serial killer, murdering a variety of people, including colleagues, the homeless, and prostitutes. Bateman kills more or less indiscriminately, with no preferred type of victim, targeting any woman, man and animal who gets in his way, and no consistent or preferred method of killing.
He kills women mostly for sadistic sexual pleasure, often during or just after sex. He kills men because they upset or annoy him or make him feel inferior. In one scene of the novel (omitted in the film), Bateman kills a child just to see if he would enjoy it; he does not because he believes that the child's death would not affect as many people as an adult's would.
Periodically, he matter-of-factly confesses his crimes to his friends, co-workers, and even complete strangers ("I like to dissect girls, did you know I'm utterly insane?") just to see if they are actually listening to him.
'Patrick Bateman's Morning Routine' EXTENDED Scene | American Psycho
Unreliable Narrator and Mental State
Bateman often expresses doubts regarding his own sanity and he has periodic attacks of psychosis, during which he hallucinates. It is left open to reader interpretation whether Bateman actually commits the crimes he describes, or whether he is merely hallucinating them; he is, therefore, an unreliable narrator. The screenwriter Guinevere Turner confirmed that, at least in the film, Patrick Bateman isn't imagining every act of violence: “Anything that seems unreal in the film to you personally might be unreal. In the ending climax of the story, Bateman calls his lawyer and leaves a lengthy, detailed message confessing all of his crimes.
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Although Bateman often claims that he is devoid of emotion, he also describes experiencing moments of extreme rage, panic or grief-being on the "verge of tears"-often over trivial inconveniences such as remembering to return videotapes or trying to obtain dinner reservations. In the middle of dismembering a victim, he breaks down, sobbing that he "just wants to be loved". He takes psychotropics, including Xanax, to control these emotions.
Bateman compensates for his anxiety through obsessive vanity and personal grooming, with unwavering attention to detail. He buys the most fashionable, expensive clothing and accessories possible, including Salvatore Ferragamo, Alan Flusser and Valentino suits, Oliver Peoples glasses and Jean Paul Gaultier, Louis Vuitton, and Bottega Veneta leather goods, as a means of effecting some "control" over his otherwise chaotic life.
Likewise, while often being confused about people's names and identities, he categorizes them by what they wear and how they look because they are more easily "understood" in terms of labels and stereotypes.
The Ending and its Ambiguity
By the end of the novel, he believes he is about to be arrested for murdering a colleague named Paul Owen (Paul Allen in the film) and leaves a message on his lawyer's answering machine confessing to his crimes. When he runs into his lawyer at a party, however, the man mistakes him for somebody else and tells him that the message must have been a joke, as he had met with Allen only days earlier.
Other Appearances
Bateman made his first appearance in Ellis's 1987 novel The Rules of Attraction (in which Sean, his brother, is the protagonist); no indication is given that he is a serial killer. Bateman also makes a short appearance in Ellis's 1998 novel Glamorama, with "strange stains" on the lapel of his Armani suit. Although they are often mistakenly credited to Ellis, they were actually written by one or more unnamed authors and approved by Ellis before being sent out.
American Psycho 2000 served as a sort of "e-sequel" to the original novel. Bateman is in psychotherapy with "Dr M". He is also married to Jean, his former secretary; they have a son, Patrick Bateman Jr. (P.B.), who is eight years old. In the story, Bateman talks about therapy, trying to get a divorce from Jean, his renewed feelings about murder, and idolizing his son.
Bateman appeared in Ellis's 2005 novel Lunar Park, in which a fictionalized version of Ellis confesses that writing American Psycho felt like channeling the words of a violent spirit rather than writing anything himself. This ghost-Bateman-haunts Ellis's home. A character also comes to Ellis's Halloween party dressed as Patrick Bateman, and a copycat killer is seemingly patterning himself on Bateman. Toward the novel's end, Ellis writes the last Bateman story as a way of confronting and controlling the character, as well as the issues Ellis created Bateman as a means of countering.
Casting and Portrayals
Though Christian Bale had been the first choice for the part by both Ellis and Harron, the role only attracted his attention after his agent told him that playing Bateman would be "professional suicide". Johnny Depp, Keanu Reeves, Edward Norton, Ewan McGregor, and Brad Pitt were also considered for the role at various points in the development process. The film's producers initially wanted Leonardo DiCaprio in the role, but Ellis (as explained in the American Psycho DVD) decided he would appear too young.
Bateman was also portrayed by Dechen Thurman, a brother of Uma Thurman, in the 2000 documentary This Is Not an Exit: The Fictional World of Bret Easton Ellis. Michael Kremko played Bateman in the standalone sequel American Psycho 2, in which the character is killed by a would-be victim. Scenes with the character were shot for the 2002 film adaptation of The Rules of Attraction. Ellis revealed in an interview that director Roger Avary asked Bale to reprise the role, but Bale turned down the offer, and Avary asked Ellis himself to portray Bateman. Ellis refused, stating that he "thought it was such a terrible and gimmicky idea", and Avary eventually shot the scenes with Casper Van Dien.
Patrick Bateman in Popular Culture
Patrick Bateman is used as an alias by Dexter Morgan in the Showtime series Dexter. Dexter, himself a serial killer, uses the alias "Dr. Patrick Bateman" to acquire M-99 for the use of incapacitating his victims as revealed in "Return to Sender." In the Dexter: Resurrection episode "Backseat Driver," it's revealed that American Psycho was a formative read for Dexter, hence his choice of alias. In the Dexter: Original Sin episode "Miami Vice," Vince Masuka makes a younger Dexter a fake ID as Patrick Bateman, believing it's so that Dexter can sneak into a party.
In the television series Riverdale, Kevin Keller (portrayed by Casey Cott) performs in a musical production of American Psycho as Bateman in the sixth-season episode "Chapter One Hundred and Twelve: American Psychos".
There is a recurring character in the video game Criminal Case named Christian Bateman (a combination of the names Christian Bale and Patrick Bateman) modeled after the character.
In February 2024, it was announced a remake of the 2000 film was in development. A screenwriter was being sought after, and the film will take place in modern times.
In October 2024, the film was revealed to be a new adaptation of Ellis' novel to be directed by Luca Guadagnino from a script by Scott Z. Burns.
Themes and Analysis
American Psycho by Brett Easton Ellis is a masterfully crafted satire that immerses its reader into the disgustingly immoral lifestyle of 1980s Wall Street men. Its clever criticisms of capitalism is one of the reasons it has earned much acclaim throughout the years.
The novel functions as a satire with the goal to point out the depravity and shallowness of the American consumerist culture and the evil that arises when humans are told that money rules absolutely everything. Patrick does not have an actual identity outside of his materialism, and it is not his fault that he was wired to embrace the revolting norms of his capitalist world. All he can do is feed into the system in which he has always been trapped in.
Commodity fetishism is a recurring theme throughout the entirety of American Psycho. Its function is to show how intertwined material goods are with the emotional states of the characters, particularly Patrick Bateman. Commodity fetishism is a term coined by Karl Marx which has to do with attributing a false value to objects through the idea that it is providing you with success, luxury and wealth.
Patrick's lifestyle essentially molded his non-existent ego, deviant superego and uncontrollable id. Patrick’s superego is completely and utterly immoral. He has fantasies about murder, rape, torture, and just about every vile act a human can commit towards another human.
Patrick Bateman is both a victim and a warning sign of what can happen to a human under the conditions of a capitalist society. He tries his hardest to find meaning in a flawed system which in turn ends in tragedy.
Psychological Profile
Bateman does not fit every symptom, but he suffers from three personality disorders: Antisocial Personality Disorder (ASPD), Narcissistic Personality Disorder, and Borderline Personality Disorder.
Some possible symptoms of ASPD include:
- Socially irresponsible behavior
- Disregarding or violating the rights of others
- Inability to distinguish between right and wrong
- Difficulty with showing remorse or empathy
- Tendency to lie often
- Manipulating and hurting others
- Recurring problems with the law
- General disregard towards safety and responsibility
Now, while analyzing Patrick Bateman's character, it could also be argued that he suffers from Narcissistic Personality Disorder and Borderline Personality Disorder.
The best way to treat Patrick Bateman, in my opinion, is hospitalization. The book and film alike leave open the idea that all the murders were in Bateman's head. Even if the murders were fantasies, there's no way of knowing that he won't lash out. Cognitive Therapy could be used to allow Bateman to get a better image of himself and learn how he creates his own problems. This should be used with medications to reduce his aggressive behavior.
| Aspect | Description |
|---|---|
| Age | 27 years old |
| Occupation | Investment Banker |
| Personality Traits | Wealthy, materialistic, superficial, narcissistic, psychotic, sadistic, anxious, low self-esteem |
| Mental Disorders | Antisocial Personality Disorder (ASPD), Narcissistic Personality Disorder, Borderline Personality Disorder |
| Key Traits | Obsessive vanity, meticulous personal grooming, addiction to sex, drugs, conspicuous consumption |
Christian Bale as Patrick Bateman.
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