Faust, Dorian Gray and Psychopathy

The psychopath's quest for pleasure is always doomed to fail.

Posted November 10, 2025 | Reviewed by Abigail Fagan

Literature often provides a window to illuminate psychological concepts and provide insight into what can propel a person towards extreme aberrant behavior, including psychopathy. Two examples are Goethe’s play Faust 1 and Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray . 2 The central characters in these works undergo transformations from benign to hedonistic lifestyles imbued with psychopathic characteristics.

Motivations and consequences

Faust, the greying academic who feels life has passed him by, and Dorian Gray, a young man seemingly full of promise, each embark on changed lives that lead to debauchery and the promise of intense pleasure. Both Faust and Dorian Gray appear innocent at the outset, but their innate inclinations tend towards living dangerously, impulsively and in ways that implicate significant psychopathic characteristics. Both of them are encouraged, aided and abetted in their transformations by outside forces — Faust by Mephistopheles, the devil, and Dorian Gray by Lord Harry Wotten, a high society rake. Mephistopheles promises Faust all the youth and pleasures he seeks in return for his soul. Lord Henry is more subtle and introduces Dorian Gray to a life of hedonistic pleasure and debauchery. As Dorian Gray spirals downward over many years, his outward appearance remains youthful and unchanged, but a portrait that had been painted of him while still innocent undergoes profound changes reflecting his actual decline into a grotesque form.

Callous and concentrated on evil

Faust, in his pleasure quest, seduces a woman who kills her baby in a state of madness that Faust precipitated. A woman Dorian Gray seduced commits suicide . Psychopathy researcher, Dr. J. Reid Meloy, draws from Oscar Wilde’s book as the epigraph for his seminal work The Psychopathic Mind: 3 [For those showing psychopathic characteristics,] “Choice is taken from them, and conscience is either killed, or if it lives at all, lives but to give rebellion its fascination, and disobedience its charm. [Dorian Gray] was “Callous, concentrated on evil, with strained mind and soul hungry for rebellion.” 4

The quest for pleasure that is never experienced

The dominant motivation for Faust and Dorian Gray is pleasure, but neither of them experiences the emotion . They are victims of their own self-centeredness akin to psychopaths. As Dr. Meloy has noted, “The conscious experience of pleasure in the psychopathic process is distinguished by the absence of empathy and affectional bonds, an incapacity to repress painful affect, [and] the absence of love for the anticipated pleasurable object. 5

Destruction of that which is good

The tragedy of Faust and The Portrait of Dorian Gray is the ruination and loss of innocent lives because of their actions. Both Faust and Dorian Gray exhibit the “evil” of psychopaths which Dr. Meloy succinctly summarizes as — [their] “wish to destroy goodness.” 6 Dr. Meloy establishes this further, when he notes: “[a] psychodynamic of psychopathy that contributes to his evil propensities is his chronic emotional detachment from others. The psychopath’s relationships are defined by power gradients, not affectional ties.” 7

At the conclusion of each work, Faust and Dorian Gray succumb literally and figuratively to their personally-destructive impulses. Faust’s soul is eternally damned. Mephistopheles claims his prize in the Faustian bargain. Dorian Gray dies when he stabs his grotesque portrait in an attempt to hide his wrongdoings. The portrait transforms back to his original innocent likeness. The dead Dorian Gray now displays the hideous, grotesque features he disdained and feared. They assumed the form and character of his deeds.

von Goethe, Johann Wolfgang. (1980). Faust. In Great Books of the Western Worl d, Goethe V. 47 . Chicago, IL: Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc.
Wilde, Oscar. (1994). The Picture of Dorian Gray . In Th e Complete Works of Oscar Wilde. New York, NY: Barnes & Noble Books. 17 - 167.
Meloy, J. Reid. (2002). The Psychopathic Mind: Origins, Dynamics, and Treatment . Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson Inc.
Meloy, J. Reid. (2002). The Psychopathic Mind: Origins, Dynamics, and Treatment . Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson Inc. xxi.
Meloy, J. Reid. (2002). The Psychopathic Mind: Origins, Dynamics, and Treatment . Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson Inc. 75 - 76.
Meloy, J. Reid. (2001). The Psychology of Wickedness. In Meloy, J. Reid (Ed.) The Mark of Cain: Psychoanalytic Insight and the Psychopath. Hillsdale, NJ: The Analytic Press. 172.
Meloy, J. Reid. (2001). The Psychology of Wickedness. In Meloy, J. Reid (Ed.) The Mark of Cain: Psychoanalytic Insight and the Psychopath. Hillsdale, NJ: The Analytic Press. 173.

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Winifred Rule is a member of the Society for the Scientific Study of Psychopathy and author of Born to Destroy , the first instructional book on the female psychopath, based on her experiences and lessons learned from living with two psychopaths.

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This article is part of the Bringwise Psychology Journal — daily insights on human behavior, mental health, and personal growth.