FEMALE PSYCHOPATH: Basic Instinct, Sharon Stone & Jolly Jane Toppan

What makes a female psychopath so hard to see, even when she tells you exactly what she’s going to do?

Content note: discussion of psychopathy and murder, sexual content and drug use in film clips, a nurse who killed her patients, a mention of a mother who killed her children, and lies about illness and sexual assault used as manipulation.

The episode that started our Female Psychopath series. We trace how Hollywood writes the female psychopath, from Fatal Attraction to Killing Eve, and why Sharon Stone’s Catherine Tramell felt colder than anything before her. Then it’s Basic Instinct (1992) in depth, with clips from the car ride and the interrogation scene, and we close with Jolly Jane Toppan, the killer nurse.

Therapists Shannon and Cathy talk about primary and secondary psychopathy, why female psychopaths so often get others to do their violence for them, character assassination, the pull toward caretaking roles, the badge of victimhood, faked emotion that looks genuine, and the blind spot that lets women with psychopathic traits go unassessed in clinics and courtrooms.

Covered in this episode:

• Launching the Female Psychopath series
• How Hollywood writes the female psychopath, from film noir to Killing Eve
• Primary vs. secondary psychopathy
• Five tips for writing a convincing female psychopath
• Basic Instinct (1992), Sharon Stone and Michael Douglas
• Seven differences between female and male psychopaths
• The cigarette in the car: manipulation hiding in plain sight
• The interrogation scene, and handing a narcissist his own win
• Why a psychopath’s tears aren’t grief
• Jolly Jane Toppan, the killer nurse
• Do we still love Basic Instinct? Misogyny, bisexuality and the film’s legacy

Clinical themes: primary and secondary psychopathy, psychopathy and borderline and narcissistic traits, manipulation and seduction, relational and social aggression, victimhood as a tactic, mimicked emotion and assessment, gender bias in diagnosis.

Corrections and updates: Floating Andrea Yates for the series is a question, not a diagnosis; she was found not guilty by reason of insanity in 2006, and her case is generally understood as postpartum psychosis. Talk of narcissism is about the characters, not the actors. Ed Gein was convicted of one murder and admitted a second. Jane Toppan confessed to 31 murders and was found not guilty by reason of insanity in 1902; she was not the first known female serial killer. The Eszterhas memoir is Hollywood Animal (2004). Since we recorded, Sharon Stone’s 2021 memoir gave her account of the interrogation scene; Paul Verhoeven disputes it.

Related episodes:

• FEMALE PSYCHOPATH: Karla Homolka, Pamela Smart & Catherine Tramell
• VAMPIRES: Real Vampires, Emotional Vampires, Daybreakers & Thirst
• GIALLO: Dario Argento, Deep Red, Mario Bava & Blood and Black Lace

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Two licensed therapists, one forensic psychologist, one clinical LMFT, take apart the minds behind the crimes.

Until then... sleep safe. 😴
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