Is Wednesday Addams a Psychopath?

“I prefer spooky”

Catch Wednesday if you can on Netflix

As we all know, there is more than enough darkness out there we need to overcome, so if we can bring some lightness to the dark, it is usually a good thing for our psychological health. The same applies when it comes to learning about or calculating how to implement counter-narcissist strategies to help the world of kindness prevail. That is why it is important to mix it up with some dark fun here and there to weaken the dark side’s mystery and to stay fresh for the fight.  

Additionally, wearing down prey, rivals and enemies is a primal standard operating procedure for narcissists, sociopaths and psychopaths, because while they are energized and get off on wounding others, for us non-narcissists, getting dragged down into their inhumane vortex of cruelty takes an exhausting toll, so these toxic manipulators have this natural advantage.

This is why CNI always recommends a strong self-care regime, suggests developing a personal gallows humor for when it is time to ridicule the darkness, and to find fun and entertaining ways to defend and educate ourselves about humanity’s darker sides, and bring a little more joy into our lives. Few things defeat a narcissist more than our being unaffected by their efforts to hurt us because we are happy. In their black and white minds, if they are not winning, they are losing, and having no power over their targeted prey is losing badly.

Making psychology fun also appears to create necessary mnemonic devices, because the abstract truths of pathological narcissism often seem to get consistently undervalued, lost or obscured by jargon and dryness, like what I just did with the term, “pathological narcissism,” which is compulsive maladaptive narcissism. Understandably, most people hear these unfamiliar abstract terms and they go in one ear and out the other, without much if any information sticking. I know because I used to be one of those people.

Hence, finding some fun in building up your knowledge base of defensive psychological weaponry helps energize you, gives one more confidence and makes the concepts more memorable. The goal is this leaves you wanting more, because more knowledge of psychology is good for everyone except narcissists. Perhaps that is the real reason why the psychologically disturbed Ron DeSantis is trying to shut down the teaching of psychology in Florida. It reveals him.

CNI philosophy on the other hand wants everyone to learn and remember as much applicable psychology as possible, so that is why we try to use entertaining stories to explain complex psychological concepts. This of course is meant to make it easier for everyone to find and hang onto positive touchstones that help them better recognize and understand someone’s dark psychology when they see it. With such knowledge, many should be able to more calmly escape dangers unnoticed, not vote for malignant narcissists and better defend themselves from these psychological sharks that swim among us.

Therefore, even if you were just barely ever a fan of any Addams Family TV show, movie or dark comedy in general, this primer should be a fun way to help you better understand the darker concepts of narcissism. However, while I did limit sharing most details of the new series, Wednesday’s psychological story cannot be told without spoiling some of the story and several of her epic one-liners, so if you have not seen Tim Burton’s unique, fun and incredibly well done Netflix production, do yourself a favor, go watch it and then come back. Even my 80+ year old mother who does not do dark shows loved it. For those who have seen it, won’t, or can handle some spoilers, here we go!

In the surreal, supernatural, coming of age, fantasy, horror, comedy series Wednesday, we find the deadpan yet intoxicating, dangerous yet protective, remorseless yet justice-focused “Miss Adams” in the midst of full-blown teenage rebellion, dropping verbal bombshells on anyone and everyone in her vicinity, in an attempt to escape her “teenage purgatory” of her parent’s attempted influence, and high school. As her father Gomez says, “We have always encouraged Wednesday to speak her mind. Sometimes her sharp tongue can cut deep.” Her brutal honesty with that sharp tongue is a big part of why Wednesday Addams has become such a huge success in pop culture, and thanks to her new series, she is approaching icon status.

Why Wednesday is so popular

She is a strong, confident, ultimate outsider, misfit and rebel who fearlessly and creatively breaks all the rules and rejects all societal norms that displease her. She has her own iconic style with no desire to fit in or conform to anyone else’s expectations, except her own, and she, “literally never had an F to give.” Although dark and twisted, she does have a very strong sense of right and wrong that she executes to perfection with her own snarky brand of diabolical wit, sarcasm and extreme prejudice.

Not only has she been relatable and loved for decades as a strong and independent person with a wicked sense of humor, she is able to say and do things few others can get away with. Therefore she also has lots of fans who vicariously live out some of their own darker urges and fantasies through her. “Sartre said hell is other people. He was my first crush." Not dark enough? “When I look at you the following emojis come to mind: rope, shovel, hole.”

One thing for sure, Wednesday is a shark in disguise in the sense she is a predator swimming through life, while only appearing to society to be just a “snarky goth girl.” However, when she smells what gets her blood up, there is no stopping her shark-like relentless pursuit of righting a wrong, finding out what she wants to know, or just taking down her rival or prey. As her roommate said after doing something dastardly, “I just asked myself, WWWD? What would Wednesday do?” Wednesday has that cold, ruthless, predator that exists in every human, but her version appears to be turned on 24/7, like a shark. “My personal philosophy is kill or be killed."

Of course assessing and diagnosing any fictional character’s levels of narcissism, sociopathy and psychopathy is obviously a tricky endeavor to do accurately unless their back story is completely patterned on a real life person, because as we know, the truth is usually stranger than fiction. Unfortunately, psychologically divergent characters and their personalities are usually there to serve the story more than be an educational conduit, so the tilt of entertainment must be accounted for too.

Additionally, when it comes to most great art, the goal is for each person to see what they want to see and relate to what they want to relate to, so it is no surprise that this piece of great art has generated several incorrect assumptions about Wednesday’s psychology and mental health. Therefore, to really understand what Wednesday’s true psychology is, we must first remove some understandable incorrect assumptions that can obscure her true nature.

Unresolved PTSD

I saw several psychological reviews claiming Wednesday had unresolved PTSD. The primary example being a childhood incident that Wednesday used to explain why she doesn’t cry. At 6-years-old, she was walking her large pet scorpion through town when a group of boys ambushed her, held her back and ran over Nero with a bicycle. As she told it, after she scooped up what was left of him and then buried him in the family plot with a large personalized gravestone, “I cried my little black heart out, but tears don’t fix anything, so I vowed to never do it again.”

This heartbreaking incident is supposed to be the reason why she has unresolved trauma and is what keeps her from trusting normal society, but if you know the Addams Family lore reasonably well, it just doesn’t add up, because this incident would be just another PTSD blip in a family that has experienced great trauma, but also has fun and takes pleasure in inflicting great trauma on society and each other. That is why I cannot see this one traumatic event as the making of Wednesday or as unresolved trauma.

In fact, for those of us who know Wednesday fairly well, it is hard to believe she did not plot and execute her revenge, in a way that would have resolved her PTSD through vengeance. She built a steam powered guillotine to more efficiently decapitate her dolls at 10-years-old, so revenge on some “normie” boys would have been child’s play for her. Obviously, that is not the way healing PTSD works but it would be an Addams’ way to resolve PTSD. However, it is correct to say the murder of her pet did affect her and the way she sees the world of “normies,” because it helps explain why she instinctively challenges, toys with and usually defeats bullies.

Additionally, the Addams family tells of generations persecuted throughout history including Wednesday’s favorite ancestor Calpurnia, who was burned at the stake in Salem in 1706 for being a witch. All it takes is watching the first Addams Family movie to hear the Addams’ credo to make one aware that Wednesday had all she needed from birth to know how “normal” society would treat her, and how an Addams is expected to react to any mistreatment. “We gladly feast on those who would subdue us.” Again, this would highly imply that she took vicious and violent revenge on the boys who killed her pet, with the encouragement and likely assistance from her family.

This Addams family backdrop is why it does seem completely wrong to try to equate one traumatic incident with being primarily formative in developing Wednesday’s psychological make-up. She was raised from birth to be a macabre, homicidal maniac in a family and species of seers, witches, superhumans and strange creatures who have lived through centuries of PTSD built up from their treatment at the hands of the “normal” world, so she was intensely aware that the cruel outside world of “normal” people was not to be trusted. 

Those are just some of the environmental factors that formed Wednesday’s psychological persona, which makes it seem that if there is any unresolved PTSD, it goes back generations. So much so that trauma is something the Addams Family does for fun, and death’s “cold embrace” is to be welcomed.

Introversion

Another mistake made about Wednesday’s psychology is that she is an introvert. While she definitely does not like other people, likes to keep to herself and is introspective, she has no shyness problem. She confidently interacts verbally or physically with others when necessary, and as the now famous “Wednesday dance” reveals, she will show off for fun. An introvert would never do a dance that made her the center of attention like that.

Introversion was also used as another reason she resents society, but again history of mistreatment is why the entire Addams family and seemingly all families whose children attend Nevermore Academy know the outside “normie” world is not to be trusted.

Additionally, most writers need solitude to work and Wednesday had written three detective novels about a teen detective Viper de la Muerte before her 16th birthday. When her therapist asked her if any had been published, Wednesday deadpanned, “Editors are short-sighted, fear-based life-forms.”

Regardless, few are such prolific writers by their early teens, and it normally requires a lot of alone time to be so productive, so conflating Wednesday’s dislike of most other people and forgetting she is a prolific writer who needs plenty of alone time to pursue her passion, is another incorrect superficial misreading of her situation and character’s general desire for solitude.

In a way, the DSM’s labeling of Antisocial Personality Disorder may deserve some blame for this misperception, because people with ASPD are not generally against being social or extroverted. They are considered antisocial because of their dark motivations and behaviors when they are social, which could fit Wednesday. However, it has been a concern of mine and others since ASPD came into existence, that many would take the misleading “antisocial” part of ASPD and conflate it with shyness. If that happened, it would additionally explain how some wrongly saw her as an introvert.

Autism Spectrum

It seems pretty clear that those thinking Wednesday is Autism Spectrum don’t really understand how easily a psychopath’s flat affect can be confused with a limited AS affect. In fact, the first time I heard the word spectrum applied to narcissism was several years ago by a young woman named Dolly. I found her because she was equally outraged that the DSM had changed Psychopathic Personality Disorder to ASPD. She explained that people think she is a psychopath because she is very shy, but as she further explained, her emotions don’t show because she is “autistic,” not because she is a psychopath. As she rightly stated, “I have emotions, they just don’t show on my face.”

Normally, only practiced fake emotions show up on a psychopath’s face after they have learned to implement them as part of their “Mask of Sanity,” but it is only human to want to somehow fit in, unless your name is Wednesday, or some other “intrepid outlier.”

The other aspect pointed to as an example of Wednesday having AS is how focused she is on learning specific subjects and her savant level brilliance at many of them, but again this misses the fact that many psychopaths are highly intelligent and have a savant level brilliance often due to a relentless drive to know all about what helps them appear normal, be accepted and get by in society, despite being a psychopath.

Interestingly, as a teen, Wednesday doesn’t bat an eyelash at being called a psychopath, but then that happened at the outcast school where inaccurate rumors of her killing a kid at her old school and her parents getting her off were rampant. She only badly injured the bully but when asked, she said deadpan, “Actually it was two kids (murdered), but who’s counting,” for scary dramatic effect. Boo!

Part II of “Is Wednesday Addams a Psychopath?” is a future mystery to be revealed as Season II approaches in 2025.

Christina Ricci’s deadpan Wednesday became a global phenomenon.

Sam Ray © 2023-25 Counter-Narcissist Intelligence