Travis Bickle; Is He Normal Crazy or Problem Crazy?

         I remember my first my first day of school junior year. Third period was starting, and I remember walking into my first psychology class and feeling so excited to learn about a subject that grasped my interests. Every day in the class I learned something new that I continue to reference to this day. Nothing we learned disinterested me, but I definitely have my favorites. One of those being the chapter on personality disorders. There are ten different personality disorders, and I found every single one fascinating. While we learned about them during class, I started to quietly observe my friends to see if I could diagnose any of them with a personality disorder.

While I have stopped diagnosing my friends, sometimes when I watch movies with characters that seem to have sort of mental disorder I will jot down some of their personality characteristics and try to psychologically diagnose them. After watching Taxi Driver for class, I thought it would be interesting to diagnose Travis Bickle with a psychological disorder. Within this broad range I decided to limit the scope to the ten personality disorders because I do not think he has a mental illness due to my prior knowledge of the more commonly known mental illnesses. After reading through descriptions of the various disorders, I decided that Travis Bickle had a Schizotypal personality disorder. People with this disorder tend to be loners and tend to incorrectly interpret social happenings. They are peculiar people as well as peculiar dressers with a persistent social anxiety linked with skeptical paranoia. In the movie Travis repeatedly displays these symptoms through his various odd behaviors.

            One of the first things I noticed about Travis while watching the movie was his tendency to be alone and avoidance of human interaction. To begin with, he drives a taxi cab at night, which is when the usual cab users are sleeping and the only passengers are pimps with their prostitutes doing sexual acts in his backseat, which means that by lack of present company, he spends that time alone. On top of that, during the day when he could be socializing with friends, he is instead typically either watching television at his home or watching pornographic movies at a movie theater. He also usually avoids people on the streets except when he sighted Betsey, whose relationship with him evaporated after events caused by his odd behaviors. People with Schizotypal personality disorder tend to display this tendency to be isolated from society. Along with this, Travis has social anxiety, which also attests to why he chooses to seclude himself from the outside world.

            It does not help Travis’s case that he has a peculiar mind that does not know how to properly socially interact with others, in addition to interpreting social events to be personal slights against him. A prime example of his lack of knowledge on how to socially interact is his brief relationship with Betsy. When he first sets eyes on her, instead of approaching her like a normal human he decides to somewhat stalk her to learn about what she likes to later utilize the information to charm her. The idea that stalking Betsy to learn more about her than just talking to her is unusual thinking that he displays in the film. And when he takes her to the pornographic movie theater viewers can really see the misunderstanding of typical human behaviors that Travis has. Once pornographic images start appearing on the screen Betsy is visibly uncomfortable, leading to her walking out of the theater without a word. When Travis follows her out he asks her what is wrong, showing that he is not aware of how inappropriate it is to have a date at a pornographic theater. Going even further, he admits that he does not know much about movies or places to take people on dates.  This lack of cultural knowledge just shows how uninvolved Travis is with other members of society, and further perpetuates our image of him as Schizotypal.

Travis also misinterprets social interactions he views amongst others as slights against himself. When he encounters Iris for the first time it in is the back of his taxi cab and she’s with a pimp. Later he runs into her again when she happens to be his prostitute for the night, and he realizes how young she is and gets angry about it. After his failed political assassination, he decides to go and save Iris from all of the pimps whom he had progressively been developing prejudiced feelings for. When he reaches Iris’s location he starts shooting all of the people he sees despite receiving hits as well. When he breaks into her room and shoots the last person he does not even pay attention to Iris, and instead tries to shoot himself. I think this lack of interest in Iris even though his goal was to save her attests to his misinterpretation of the situation. Travis feels Iris’s situation as if it is his problem and he is being slighted. I think that is why he decides to go “save” Iris; I think he did it for himself instead of for her well-being.

            Another Schizotypal indicator is his peculiar and eccentric style. Throughout the film he is always wearing this green army jacket. No one else in the film wore clothing of that style, which reaffirmed Travis’s low social ability in addition to making him stand out. At the end, he was also sporting this cool and scary mohawk hairdo which is also not commonly seen during that time period. Although it supports the symptoms of Schizotypal, I thought the mohawk was cool and would definitely give my child one.

            He also displays some odd linguistic and behaviors throughout the film, which are other symptoms of Schizotypal personality disorder. One example is the scene when he is practicing with his guns while simultaneously asking an invisible presence if it is looking at him. This behavior is odd because he continues to have this drawn out conversation with himself, and presumably a figure of his imagination, even though there is no one threatening around him. Another odd behavior is the breakfast meal he eats while watching television. As he eats his sad breakfast of bread drenched in milk and syrup, I cannot help but be concerned. I mean, who does that? When Iris comes over for breakfast, it becomes apparent that Travis does not have a good sense of appropriate forms of discourse. Travis continuously talks to her as if she is a gang member, repeatedly referring to her as ‘man’ and using foul language around her. It is strange that a normal adult would converse with a child in that manner.

            At the end of the film, Travis is driving Betsy home in his taxi. And while it is up to interpretation as to whether or not the scene is real, the viewer is prompted to question whether Travis has gotten better or not, and by the reflection of his eyes in the rearview mirror it is suggested that he has not. It makes sense to me that Travis would not have gotten better, especially since he suffers from an undiagnosed personality disorder. There is no way that he would be able to re-enter society as a normal citizen without proper treatment for his disorder. For those viewers who believe that the ending clip is not a dream, the diagnosis of his Schizotypal personality type is a large supporter that he will just revert back to his old ways.

            Up until watching this movie, it had been awhile since I had attempted to psychologically diagnose characters or people. I had forgotten how intriguing it is to take a deeper look into a person’s actions and analyze whether they are normal. In my lifetime, I will probably encounter very few people, if any, which Schizotypal personality disorder. Viewing the movie from the perspective that Travis suffers from a personality disorder is comforting, because I am able to better explain his quirks and habits. I may not be a psychologist, or have the training necessary to psychoanalyze someone, but even with my limited knowledge, it is apparent to me that Travis suffers from a personality disorder. Given his eclectic style, inability to function as a part of society, and tendency to isolate himself, I think a diagnosis of Schizotypal is fitting for Travis. The way I see it, a schizotypal diagnosis, is the only way Taxi Driver makes sense.