CHARACTER EVALUATION
STRANGE CASE OF DR. JEKYLL and MR. HYDE (Robert Lewis Stevenson, 1886)
BERTHA THOMAS
PSY/230
FEBRUARY 12, 2012
PURVI PATEL

CHARACTER EVALUATION: STRANGE CASE OF DR. JEKYLL and MR. HYDE, (Robert Lewis Stevenson, (1886))

“I learned to recognize the thorough and primitive duality of man . . . if I could rightly be said to be either, it was only because I was radically both” (Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Robert Lewis
Stevenson (1886). Dr. Jekyll’s self-description of his personality, toward the beginning of his impending and irrevocable metamorphosis, fit comfortably into the category of what is known as psychoticism. Hans Eysenck (1952) proposed that a susceptibility to psychosis represented an important dimension of Personality and might, in fact, be present, in mild form, in the general population. Consequently, Dr. Jekyll seems to be the subject of this mental disorder, coupled with scientific product. Although it is safe to say that most of us would score somewhere at the low or high end of the Big Five characteristic traits, there is usually a plateau upon which we can be scored.
Contrarily, Dr. Jekyll fluctuated between these two extremes, enjoying each in its totality, until the pressure of the duality became too much to bear. I believe the concept of humanity’s sense of good and evil (our duality) can be represented by the low and high ends of the Big Five characteristic traits that dwell within us all. Therefore, the individual who is perceived as psychotic, as was Dr. Jekyll, could possibly be fighting the notion that good and evil exists within us all and results in the evil being projected onto others.

Analyzing the story of Dr. Henry Jekyll and Mr. Edward Hyde, theories vary as to what kind of evil Mr.
Hyde heaped on the public, as it is never really