ourchair
Well-Known Member
As promised, here is the Rorschach Psychoanalysis I co-wrote with a friend at about the same time I wrote the Doom Psychoanalysis.
“From Rorschach’s journal.
October 12th, 1985.
The streets are extended gutters and the gutters are full of blood and when the drains finally scab over, all the vermin will drown. The accumulated filth of all their sex and murder will foam up about their waists and all the whores and politicians will look up and shout “Save us!”… …And I’ll look down and whisper ‘No.’”
The vigilante known as Rorschach (real name Walter Kovacs) of Alan Moore’s The Watchmen has one intention behind every action: purpose. His most distinguishing feature is a plain white mask with black “inkblots” on it. In Dave Gibbon’s illustrations, the mask blots are always changing and are never in the same pattern twice.
Although he lacks any powers and carries little weaponry, Rorschach is quite skilled in his crusade. He kills, captures, and injures criminals with no remorse. To him it’s just part of his job – delivery of justice no matter how brutal.
The Watchmen opens with Rorschach investigating the brutal murder of Edward Blake, a retired adventurer who went by the nom de guerre of The Comedian. Rorschach forms his hypothesis rather quickly: Blake’s murder is part of a calculated annihilation of masked avengers and that out on the streets, is a serial killer of costumes.
He injures multiple people in his investigation, but he is eventually subdued by the New York Police Department and placed in maximum security. While in police custody he is assigned a psychoanalyst, Dr. Malcolm Long, who, for a moment, considers the kind of career boost he would get from a success with Kovacs/Rorschach.
During their first session together, Dr. Long observes that Kovacs is “withdrawn, with no expression in either face or voice.” The doctor is shown administering the Rorschach inkblot test. Kovacs imagines dogs with their skulls split and people coupling within the inkblots, but when asked for answers he stays on the safe side: pretty butterflies and nice flowers.
In one chapter dedicated exclusively to Rorschach, we are presented with Kovacs’ childhood memories: His first flashback narrates how he walked in on his prostitute mother in bed with a client, and how he is physically and verbally abused after for ruining her night.
In another flashback, we are presented with the beginnings of a conduct disorder. Young Kovacs is seen being picked on by a couple of older boys, making nasty remarks about his mother and calling him “whoreson”. He responds by stabbing a lit cigarette into the eye of one of the boys and physically assaulting the other.
In another section dedicated to files and documents on Kovacs we learn that after the attack, the investigation revealed that he was regularly beaten and exposed to “the worst excesses of a prostitute’s lifestyle.” He was taken out of his mother’s care and placed in the Lillian Charlton Home for Problem Children where he remained until 1956.
During the time at the house, away from his mother, Kovacs did very well at schoolwork. He was unusually quiet and shy, especially around women, but was capable of lengthy conversations with classmates and instructors. His loathing for his mother remained though. When she was murdered later that year, his only comment was “Good.”
When Dr. Long isn’t satisfied with the tests, he confronts Kovacs about “Rorschach.” He gets a little more than he wanted. Kovacs tells Dr. Long everything he wants to know, about how Rorschach (and his mask) came to be, and why.
He relates how, at 16, he became a manual worker in the garment industry, a job he found unpleasant because he had to handle female clothing. In 1962, he was working with a special fabric worn by another hero, Doctor Manhattan, that had viscous fluids between two layers of latex that was sensitive to heat and pressure.
This was the beginning of Rorschach, but Kovacs insists that even then he was just “Kovacs pretending to be Rorschach.” According to Kovacs, it takes a special kind of insight to actually be Rorschach, the kind of insight he lacked early in his career. To Kovacs, his early days as a costumed crime fighter were particularly soft and marked by what he perceives as naiveté.
Unlike many other costumed crime-fighters, the young Kovacs was driven by a sense of moral indignation. When he first met The Comedian at the first meeting of the Crimebusters in 1964, Kovacs/Rorschach took an immediate liking to him. He described The Comedian as a “forceful” and “uncompromising” personality:
Long notes that although Rorschach points out that he is “compelled,” he never is clear as to what exactly it is that compels him other than his sense of self-righteousness. His mother, his childhood and Kitty Genovese were merely elements that made him overreact to the world’s injustice. “They’re not what sent him over the edge. They’re not what turned him into Rorschach. It’s as if continual contact with society’s grim elements has shaped him into something grimmer, something even worse.”
The next session deals with the true birth of Rorschach. In 1975 there was a publicized kidnapping case involving a six year old girl named Blaire Roche. The kidnapper believed she was heiress to a chemical fortune, but they had the wrong family. Her father was a bus driver, and they had no money at all. Rorschach intervened and promised her parents that he would bring her home.
Rorschach visited the underworld bars looking for information. When he finally got the address of a disused dressmaker’s in Brooklyn, Rorschach continued his investigation there. He quickly concluded that the kidnapper, Gerald Grice, killed the little girl, butchered her, and fed her remains to his two German Shepherds.
Rorschach took his revenge by splitting the dogs’ heads, the same dogs he sees in the inkblots. He vividly recalls that as he bludgeoned the dogs, “it was Kovacs who said “Mother” then, muffled under latex. It was Kovacs who closed his eyes. It was Rorschach who opened them again.”
When Grice returned he handcuffed him to a piece of furniture, doused him and the house in kerosene and set him ablaze.
It was from that incident that the “true” Rorschach was born. The costumed adventurers of The Watchmen are driven by many things. The Nite Owl uses this job to live out his adolescent fantasies. The Silk Spectre feels a sense of obligation to her mother. The Comedian is driven by unbridled patriotism and a sense of self-superiority.
None of these motives drive Rorschach. Rorschach views himself as a “post-human” being, for lack of a better term. He thinks his mask is his “face” and Walter Kovacs is the costume he uses to blend in. Initially driven by moral indignation, Rorschach has transcended that motive to bend all heroic conventions and completing his growth towards becoming clinically antisocial.
As such, Rorschach’s crusade on criminals has little to do with any kind of moral duty or conscientiousness on his part. Instead, the means of his crusade have become an end in itself. He achieves more satisfaction out of the violent methods he uses to accomplish his goals rather than the justice he claims to serve.
Rorschach’s journal entries are also marked by an emotional indifference and his interactions with other people are characterized by cold purposefulness. He lacks the remorse that most other costumed adventurers would feel and makes use of a perverse belief system to justify his wanton disregard for the rights and safety of others.
It is doubtful that Rorschach could ever be convinced to give up his crusade. When the Keene Act of 1977 made vigilantism illegal and forced many heroes into retirement, it engendered a very blunt response from Rorschach: The dead body of a multiple rapist left outside of the New York Police Department, with a note attached to that said, “NEVER!”
Rorschach has seen so much failure in humanity and success in his reckless vigilante ways that a return to normal living would be difficult for him. He equates humanity with failure and that belief is the greatest obstacle to his rehabilitation.
“From Rorschach’s journal.
October 12th, 1985.
The streets are extended gutters and the gutters are full of blood and when the drains finally scab over, all the vermin will drown. The accumulated filth of all their sex and murder will foam up about their waists and all the whores and politicians will look up and shout “Save us!”… …And I’ll look down and whisper ‘No.’”
The vigilante known as Rorschach (real name Walter Kovacs) of Alan Moore’s The Watchmen has one intention behind every action: purpose. His most distinguishing feature is a plain white mask with black “inkblots” on it. In Dave Gibbon’s illustrations, the mask blots are always changing and are never in the same pattern twice.
Although he lacks any powers and carries little weaponry, Rorschach is quite skilled in his crusade. He kills, captures, and injures criminals with no remorse. To him it’s just part of his job – delivery of justice no matter how brutal.
The Watchmen opens with Rorschach investigating the brutal murder of Edward Blake, a retired adventurer who went by the nom de guerre of The Comedian. Rorschach forms his hypothesis rather quickly: Blake’s murder is part of a calculated annihilation of masked avengers and that out on the streets, is a serial killer of costumes.
He injures multiple people in his investigation, but he is eventually subdued by the New York Police Department and placed in maximum security. While in police custody he is assigned a psychoanalyst, Dr. Malcolm Long, who, for a moment, considers the kind of career boost he would get from a success with Kovacs/Rorschach.
During their first session together, Dr. Long observes that Kovacs is “withdrawn, with no expression in either face or voice.” The doctor is shown administering the Rorschach inkblot test. Kovacs imagines dogs with their skulls split and people coupling within the inkblots, but when asked for answers he stays on the safe side: pretty butterflies and nice flowers.
In one chapter dedicated exclusively to Rorschach, we are presented with Kovacs’ childhood memories: His first flashback narrates how he walked in on his prostitute mother in bed with a client, and how he is physically and verbally abused after for ruining her night.
In another flashback, we are presented with the beginnings of a conduct disorder. Young Kovacs is seen being picked on by a couple of older boys, making nasty remarks about his mother and calling him “whoreson”. He responds by stabbing a lit cigarette into the eye of one of the boys and physically assaulting the other.
In another section dedicated to files and documents on Kovacs we learn that after the attack, the investigation revealed that he was regularly beaten and exposed to “the worst excesses of a prostitute’s lifestyle.” He was taken out of his mother’s care and placed in the Lillian Charlton Home for Problem Children where he remained until 1956.
During the time at the house, away from his mother, Kovacs did very well at schoolwork. He was unusually quiet and shy, especially around women, but was capable of lengthy conversations with classmates and instructors. His loathing for his mother remained though. When she was murdered later that year, his only comment was “Good.”
When Dr. Long isn’t satisfied with the tests, he confronts Kovacs about “Rorschach.” He gets a little more than he wanted. Kovacs tells Dr. Long everything he wants to know, about how Rorschach (and his mask) came to be, and why.
He relates how, at 16, he became a manual worker in the garment industry, a job he found unpleasant because he had to handle female clothing. In 1962, he was working with a special fabric worn by another hero, Doctor Manhattan, that had viscous fluids between two layers of latex that was sensitive to heat and pressure.
This was the beginning of Rorschach, but Kovacs insists that even then he was just “Kovacs pretending to be Rorschach.” According to Kovacs, it takes a special kind of insight to actually be Rorschach, the kind of insight he lacked early in his career. To Kovacs, his early days as a costumed crime fighter were particularly soft and marked by what he perceives as naiveté.
Unlike many other costumed crime-fighters, the young Kovacs was driven by a sense of moral indignation. When he first met The Comedian at the first meeting of the Crimebusters in 1964, Kovacs/Rorschach took an immediate liking to him. He described The Comedian as a “forceful” and “uncompromising” personality:
Long notes that although Rorschach points out that he is “compelled,” he never is clear as to what exactly it is that compels him other than his sense of self-righteousness. His mother, his childhood and Kitty Genovese were merely elements that made him overreact to the world’s injustice. “They’re not what sent him over the edge. They’re not what turned him into Rorschach. It’s as if continual contact with society’s grim elements has shaped him into something grimmer, something even worse.”
The next session deals with the true birth of Rorschach. In 1975 there was a publicized kidnapping case involving a six year old girl named Blaire Roche. The kidnapper believed she was heiress to a chemical fortune, but they had the wrong family. Her father was a bus driver, and they had no money at all. Rorschach intervened and promised her parents that he would bring her home.
Rorschach visited the underworld bars looking for information. When he finally got the address of a disused dressmaker’s in Brooklyn, Rorschach continued his investigation there. He quickly concluded that the kidnapper, Gerald Grice, killed the little girl, butchered her, and fed her remains to his two German Shepherds.
Rorschach took his revenge by splitting the dogs’ heads, the same dogs he sees in the inkblots. He vividly recalls that as he bludgeoned the dogs, “it was Kovacs who said “Mother” then, muffled under latex. It was Kovacs who closed his eyes. It was Rorschach who opened them again.”
When Grice returned he handcuffed him to a piece of furniture, doused him and the house in kerosene and set him ablaze.
It was from that incident that the “true” Rorschach was born. The costumed adventurers of The Watchmen are driven by many things. The Nite Owl uses this job to live out his adolescent fantasies. The Silk Spectre feels a sense of obligation to her mother. The Comedian is driven by unbridled patriotism and a sense of self-superiority.
None of these motives drive Rorschach. Rorschach views himself as a “post-human” being, for lack of a better term. He thinks his mask is his “face” and Walter Kovacs is the costume he uses to blend in. Initially driven by moral indignation, Rorschach has transcended that motive to bend all heroic conventions and completing his growth towards becoming clinically antisocial.
As such, Rorschach’s crusade on criminals has little to do with any kind of moral duty or conscientiousness on his part. Instead, the means of his crusade have become an end in itself. He achieves more satisfaction out of the violent methods he uses to accomplish his goals rather than the justice he claims to serve.
Rorschach’s journal entries are also marked by an emotional indifference and his interactions with other people are characterized by cold purposefulness. He lacks the remorse that most other costumed adventurers would feel and makes use of a perverse belief system to justify his wanton disregard for the rights and safety of others.
It is doubtful that Rorschach could ever be convinced to give up his crusade. When the Keene Act of 1977 made vigilantism illegal and forced many heroes into retirement, it engendered a very blunt response from Rorschach: The dead body of a multiple rapist left outside of the New York Police Department, with a note attached to that said, “NEVER!”
Rorschach has seen so much failure in humanity and success in his reckless vigilante ways that a return to normal living would be difficult for him. He equates humanity with failure and that belief is the greatest obstacle to his rehabilitation.
