Arkham Asylum is probably one of the most notorious institutions for the mentally ill in the history of fiction. Rightfully so, since the 1980s it has housed many of Batman’s most notable villains, including the likes of The Joker, Bane, The Scarecrow and Ra’s al Ghul. This makes perfect sense when you think about it because pretty much all of Batman’s villains are psychotic and/or insane. Because of this, I couldn’t help but think that the same must be true about Batman; especially since he has been able to out think his mentally ill adversaries. Think about it, aren’t the best detectives the ones that can supposedly get inside the minds of the criminals? If this is true, then why hasn’t Batman been permanently committed to Arkham himself? I can think of at least three personality traits that prove he is criminally insane.
#1 The Ends Justify The Means
Like all criminals, Batman usually gets what he wants through brutal intimidation tactics. He doesn’t kill his adversaries, obviously or he wouldn’t have anymore villains, but he does sometimes resort to interesting tactics to achieve his goals. He has dangled villains off of the side of high rise buildings, and left many a villain in predicaments, that well only a criminal mastermind would be able to escape, and to what end? Well, that’s just the point. Not unlike say the criminal mastermind and fellow psychotic The Joker, Batman believes that his reasons for doing what he is doing trumps anything else, which makes me wonder, would he even care about the criminal element in Gotham if his parents died by some other means? Asked and answered.
#2 Guilty by Association
We’ve all heard the saying: you are the company you keep. Well, if that’s indeed true, then Batman is undeniably insane with criminal tendencies. He spends most of his time fighting and/or thinking about his adversaries to the point that they consume much of his life. Yes, that is the life of a superhero, however, it is also the case for the mentally disturbed as well. Even if you weren’t willing to entertain the notion that Batman is inherently crazy and deserves to be locked up in Arkham Asylum, surely you could entertain the idea that after all these years of spending so much time with psychotic villains with one tracked minds, their behavior would eventually rub off on him.
#3 A Vengeful Heart
As the story goes, Batman was not born into the job of vigilante, but rather he was made into the Batman. After his parents were tragically murdered right in front of him, a young Bruce Wayne then retracted inside of himself before re-emerging to search for deeper meaning in his life. This meaning, he ultimately found, was in becoming Batman and fighting to rid Gotham City of the criminal element that brought on the untimely death of his own parents. As tragic as his story may be, many of Arkham Asylum’s patients also have tragic or sad beginnings that have ultimately contributed to the psychosis that drives their pathological behavior in an attempt to somehow avenge the wrong that they were dealt in their life. Case in point: the very founder of Arkham, Amadeus Arkham, slowly went insane in his own institution as he obsessed over the hands-on treatment of the serial killer who murdered his wife and child in cold blood. The Joker, Two-Face among others also have survived personal tragedies that lead to their insanity and subsequent criminal behavior, not unlike the Batman, himself. The irony is that, while Batman’s villains are constantly being imprisoned at Arkham, Batman, who is essentially just like them, gets to go free.
As you can see, Batman is not that much different from his many psychotic adversaries with whom he is often entangled. In fact, he resorts to virtually the same kinds of intimidation tactics that his most notable villains resort to in an effort to achieve his goals, starting with going after the criminal element in Gotham; a passion which is really driven by vengeance for the murder of his parents. Ultimately, he has an axe to grind and not unlike his Arkham Asylum adversaries, there is very little he won’t do to get what he wants.