The Psychology of Eric Cartman

eric cartman to those unfamiliar with the name they may think nothing of it a 10 year old kid from a small quiet mountain town in colorado just your typical unassuming kid who likes to hang out with his friends and play with his toys however underneath the veil of your typical elementary school boy there's a much much darker side in fact we may be in the presence of the most disturbed manipulative narcissistic intelligent pathological liar that has ever been conceived in the history of media and in cases like this it's important to answer one question why what caused this how did it cause this and what are the effects of this this is the psychology of eric carpman [Music] before i start i just want to give a big shout out to userdaddycool13 on reddit while researching this video i came across a post he made detailing his own psychological analysis of cartman and it definitely provided some points i'll be making in this video so go ahead and check out his post on the topic also disclaimer i am not a psychologist this video is just for fun i did like an hour of research and this is just for fun so yeah now the most important part of understanding the psychology of cartman is to first understand what it is that causes him to do the things he does so it's time to dust off my old psychology textbook and really read into his character the first diagnoses that may come to mind are psychopath or sociopath so let's start by figuring out what these terms really mean as well as the difference between them psychopath is defined by the webster dictionary as a person having an egocentric and anti-social personality marked by a lack of remorse for one's actions an absence of empathy for others and often criminal tendencies and while a sociopath is not technically an official diagnosis there is no concrete definition for what it means to be one however it's generally accepted that a sociopath has many of the same characteristics of a psychopath but lacks the more violent side of psychopathy both terms would fall under the category of what's called antisocial personality disorder now at first glance the way psychopath is defined seems to match up pretty well with cartman as he does show many of these characteristics to really be sure let's go through the seven characteristics that are used to diagnose a true psychopath and see how cartman's actions stack up the first characteristic of a psychopath is pathological lying and manipulation psychopaths will do whatever it takes to get what they want and this includes deceiving and manipulating people cartman is obviously no stranger to this as there are countless examples of him doing just that he has a track record of finding a way of taking control of any situation he's in and manipulating people into doing exactly what he wants the first episode that comes to mind is ginger kids in which cartman reveals his hatred for gingers to his class so the other boys decide to turn him into one to give him a taste of his own medicine when he realizes what happened he's able to manipulate all of the other gender kids into treating him as some sort of king making them believe they're superior to all other humans and that they need to cleanse the earth of all that aren't ginger now let the extermination begin a similar situation arose after he watched the passion of the christ by mel gibson and it only strengthened his hatred of jewish people so of course he's able to manipulate a large portion of the town into attempting to recreate the actions of a certain german dictator not to mention his entire relationship with heidi just becoming a cycle of abuse and manipulation so yeah it's pretty safe to say that cartman is in fact a pathological liar and manipulator the second psychopathic trait is rule breaking or failure to obey laws instead of doing any sort of analysis for this one i think it would honestly just be better if i tried to list every single crime that cartman has committed in one breath so let's do it alright here we go murder prostitution vandalism manslaughter murder by proxy and forced suicide animal abuse attempted murder attempt genocide genocide and force cannibalism assault smuggling drug possession theft obstruction a criminal investigation armed robbery threatening with a deadly weapon arson grave robbing hate crimes kidnapping false imprisonment unless in surgery terrorism war crimes medical terrorism piracy breaking and entering credit fraud identity theft hit and run underage driving resisting arrest child abuse blackmailing torture fraud rape forceful confinement content to court vigilantism fault evidence slander hitchhiking theft and child pornography oh my god so yeah i don't think there's any question whether or not carmen has this trait another trait is impulsive behavior cartman is extremely impulsive so much so that it often is his downfall he has the inability to not act impulsively when presented with a thought he wants to act on this has led to countless instances of his plans falling apart due to the dumb decisions he makes impulsively i think principal victoria puts it best in the episode tmi this is exactly the kind of thing we are always talking about eric you get angry about something you don't think and you cause bad things to happen this time you've done it to yourself [Music] then there's the trait of irritability and aggression manifested as frequently assaults others or engages in fighting it's pretty common knowledge that cartman isn't afraid to get physical with those that get in his way specifically kyle most often and though it is rarely seen that cartman actually wins a fight there are still plenty of examples of him being willing to hurt someone if it means getting his way the next trait is a blatant disregard for the safety of themselves and others carmen has lived rather recklessly in the 24 seasons of south park putting himself and those around him into countless situations that could result in severe injury or death to him and the others for example when he intentionally concusses himself in order to have a flashback so he doesn't have to think about what he has to write for a school project oh gee i wonder what it used to be like in the year 1776 this also goes hand in hand with his impulsiveness as he doesn't often think twice when doing something that could hurt him or others then there's the trait of a pattern of irresponsibility which obviously kind of goes along with all the other traits then finally and arguably most importantly for our purposes is a lack of empathy now at first glance it would seem pretty obvious that cartman has absolutely no empathy for anyone or anything as his track record has shown his blatant disregard for other humans that stand in the way of getting to what he wants i mean this is the kid that was willing to murder a kid's parents and feed them to him just because he scammed him out of 16 however what makes this diagnosis tricky is the fact that cartman actually does show empathy throughout the show just not really towards humans the most obvious example of cartman's empathy is in his toys his toys have always been important to him specifically clyde frog and polly prissypants we get to see how truly important they are to him in the episode one percent in which his toys are destroyed we get to see the mental toll that it takes on him and the emotions he experiences because of it granted it turns out that he was the one destroying his own toys in a bizarre ploy to grow up but that's besides the point another example of carbon actually having some form of empathy is in the episode major boobage after cats are banned in south park due to the popularization of getting high off of their urine cartman decides to protect the cats illegally keeping many of them in his own attic he doesn't benefit from it in any way he truly does it out of the kindness of his own heart now obviously the writers had him do this to recreate the story of anne frank and be ironic but either way he still cared for these animals with no personal gain proving that he has at least a sliver of empathy in his heart and because of this particularly i don't necessarily feel comfortable labeling him as a psychopath instead my label for cartman is a bit more complicated and specific in my extremely unqualified opinion my official diagnosis for cartman is narcissistic personality disorder with psychopathic tendencies now the actions of a narcissist can often come across very similar to that of a psychopath in cartman's case he cares about power his image and proving himself to others that he's willing to do whatever it takes to have power in adoration because of this he often displays the same traits as a psychopath but i don't believe he truly is one and as i'm recording this voiceover it's actually starting to remind me of the real life case of luca magnata or the cat killer basically luca was also a narcissist who wanted fame and attention so bad he was willing to do some absolutely horrible things in order to get that i won't go into details here about what he did but there's a great netflix documentary on it if you care to check it out because of this incessant need to get the things that he wants carbon often displays very similar traits to that of a psychopath but i don't believe he truly is one not to mention the fact that you can't technically be diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder until you're 18 so obviously carbon doesn't fall into that category oh and how could i forget cartman was literally turned into an obedient respectful child in the episodes something that would be completely impossible in someone with aspd so now that we have the diagnosis down it's time to get to the bottom of what exactly caused this a common topic that's brought up when discussing psychopaths and people of that nature is that of nature versus nurture or exactly how much of a person's personality comes from genetics versus how much of it comes from how they were raised it's generally understood that for most cases it's a combination of both that determines the person's future actions however based on my research true psychopaths are an exception to this having absolutely zero emotional ability or empathy for anyone or anything is almost always something you're born with cartman's traits however are much more in line with what you would expect from a child suffering from severe trauma and neglect so that brings us to the root cause of the evil being that is eric cartman the only person that has been with him since day one and has accidentally taught him he shouldn't care for others that of course is his mother now it's no secret that eric's mother is a bit of an enabler when it comes to his bad behavior this is shown time and time again throughout the show as she is shown to bend to cartman's every will as well as be easily susceptible to his manipulation now normally this type of parenting would likely just raise a bratty spoiled kid but in carmen's case it's far worse his mother is also very well known for the things that she likes to do in her free time all of which cartman is well aware of this type of thing can be severely damaging to the mind of a child who's unaware of what any of it really means and it can easily twist and warp their own identities which has been shown to correlate strongly with misbehavior it's also been shown many times throughout the show that miss cartman would rather participate in her extracurricular activities than you know be a parent to her son and in the few times that we've really gotten to understand how ms cartman feels about eric it appears that she uses cartman more as a way to feel better about herself rather than considering that he's an actual person all of these factors combined have taught cartman that no one will truly love or care for him that everyone is motivated only by their own self-interests and that using people is okay if it helps you reach your goals and because of this miss cartman has accidentally created the most sick evil and twisted kid that has ever existed and now hopefully we all have a better understanding of the psychology of eric cartman oh yeah and i almost forgot to mention the most truly evil thing that cartman has done oh [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Blooms

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Length: 13min 0sec (780 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 21 2021