What Kind of Monster was Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde?
What this classic monster story can teach us about real-life horrors
The Strange Case of Dr. Henry Jekyll and Mr. John Hyde is a classic story in our monster mythology, but Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is actually no supernatural or abnormal tale:
HE'S A COVERT MALIGNANT NARCISSIST.
This means he is of a Cluster B personality disorder type: The narcissist antisocial, diagnosed Antisocial Personality Disorder (ASPD).
Colloquially, this is known as A SOCIOPATH.
Dr. Henry Jekyll is a good man, a wealthy man, a rational, well-respected doctor of the community. He has charm and charisma. No one who knows him can imagine a bad thing about him. He’s beloved.
Dr. Jekyll can’t imagine a bad thing about himself either. He’s a good man. He tells himself this, though he knows he’s in a mask. He knows he’s hiding something. He has written a will that should he disappear, all his wealth should be given to this mysterious benefactor: MR. JOHN HYDE.
Who is that????
Nobody knows him. He seems to be a rotten, wretched man with no friends who slinks around in the night harming children. INNOCENT CHILDREN.
No, no, Dr. Jekyll doesn’t believe that. His friend is a wretched man, yes, but…misunderstood. Is he bribing you? His friend asks. Dr. Jekyll quietly hangs his head in shame.
Dr. Jekyll knows gotdamn well that he is Mr. Hyde. He CREATED HIM. He needs him. Mr. Hyde is the only time that DR. JEKYLL CAN FEEL GOOD.
But, he’s not a bad man! He’s Dr. Jekyll! See the good deeds he does daily? See how people love him? See his wealth and status and power? These are rewards, proof of his goodness. So everything he does in the darkness, must be justified.
He can’t help it. It’s the only time he feels relief. Relief from all the wretched rot in his guts. They must DESERVE IT.
But, when faced with proof that Mr. Hyde is a murderer, that MR. HYDE HURTS INNOCENT CHILDREN, then what happens to Dr. Jekyll??
HE COLLAPSES.
A NARCISSIST COLLAPSE.
Otherwise known as….hell on earth. 🔥 🔥 🔥
Alone, Dr. Jekyll collapses into Hyde, and he must face the truth: he’s not a good man. He’s a bad man. He hurts innocent people. He’s evil. No one would love him if they knew the truth.
In a collapse, a narcissist has to face the truth their mask hid. From themselves and the world.
In a collapse, they must face their self deception: I don’t even deserve to be alive. I am unlovable.
In fact, Mr. Hyde is not even a man. He’s not an adult. He is Dr. Jekyll’s dead inner child. He is no more than a toddler, betrayed by his own parents, unlovable, cast off from God.
HE IS SHAMEFUL. HE IS SHAME.
He is a suffering child who slinks around at night trying to find some other innocent child to bear the shame, someone who deserves it, A SCAPEGOAT. AN OBJECT OF REVENGE.
So that his inner child can feel good, feel relieved. So then he can walk in the world and do good as Dr. Jekyll, the beloved and entitled and respected man.
But it’s not true, is it? He’s a monster. Unlovable.
Faced with this, Mr. Hyde chooses suicide.
He bears his truth before he dies, of the bewitching potion, of the monster he created, of his unbearable pain, the maggots of the dead child churning in his guts.
“If I am the chief of sinners, I am the chief of sufferers also.”
Mr. Hyde, and subsequently Dr. Jekyll, die.
And the world will have more peace without them.
This book is a masterpiece. I was a literature major raised by parents with ASPD; my favorite genre was horror, because finally, something scarier than my home.
I have interacted with several tragic covert malignants due to being raised by one.
All were the same as my father: racists, rapists, child rapists who would go on to rape children as adults, closeted homosexuals, misogynists, and very destructive people, causing much psychological harm to those close to them.
And also, charming, handsome, kind, hard workers, beloved people. EASY TO LOVE.
First, my father: I saw several collapses that led to strange breakdowns in my sister’s room in which he apologized for being a bad dad.
Then he snapped back like it never happened. Never mentioned it.
Eventually, he attempted suicide.
But he survived. Hid many dark secrets.
Mr. Hyde.
My first love, as a teenager: by the time I’d met him, he’d already been sexually assaulted by family members, and he desired the company of boys more than girls and was regularly mocked by family for having no female sexual experiences. He told me that he lost his virginity raping a girl the summer before we met, breaking into her house and stealing her music too.
He was the sweetest boy. I thought he was joking. I became his supply.
But he committed suicide after attempting to rape his other male supply, another narcissist, and being discarded. He collapsed, faced his truth and the truth of his hurt inner child, and he took all of his father’s methadone and died at 15.
Just like Mr. Hyde did.
A couple years later, that friend of his would commit suicide and die too.
Another Hyde.
Their traumas all knocked me out cold. They projected all their pain into me when they died.
Three years ago, I met the world’s friendliest maintenance man; he seemed so familiar. Familiar in a charming, but dangerous way. Familiar enough that I knew to stay away. He’s a narcissist, I’m sure, I told my therapist.
"I’m a good man," he professed after drugging me, breaking into my screen door with a crow bar, raping me, stalking me, "I try to be a good man." He put his hand to his heart as he said it. He looked so innocent.
What he really thought: you deserve it.
HE WAS DR. JEKYLL. MR. HYDE. DR. JEKYLL. MR. HYDE.
I struggled to see which was real. The cognitive dissonance took me out. I knew he raped me. There was pain, blood in my sheets. Evidence everywhere. And I remembered parts of it. But he was so kind. So seriously kind to me.
Signs of a narcissist, yes, but, a covert one, harmless if you step away quietly, certainly not…a sociopath. Not that. Not that…
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is a true story. It is a horror that walks among us.
Because if he accepted his rejection from me, when he heard me confess what I suspected about him on the microphone he’d installed in my apartment, that would mean he deserved it, as a child, what was done to him, what horrors, what humiliations.
That he wasn’t the best. A good man. Entitled.
I heard from his best friend that he collapsed soon after. That he’d never seen someone cry so much as that, that it was scary, he thought he was gonna hurt himself or he was gonna hurt someone else.
Then he got a new job, moved away with his wife. People missed him. The nicest man. I missed him too — that mask I’d known.
He continued to stalk me, as I realized he’d shared my phone settings to his phone when drugging me.
I’m sure his Mr. Hyde is even meaner now, lurking at night, finding the innocence who deserves it, who can hold his shame. I’m sure he still thinks I deserved it.
It’s a horror that happens to our most unloved, abused, emotionally neglected inner children.
People whose burning traumas and emotional voids I’ve had to sit far too close to.
Mr. Hyde is a black hole. Void of all light. A vacuum no innocence can escape from.
He knows what he is: he’s proud of it. He thinks it makes him special, strong, better, smarter.
That’s what he has to tell himself to survive.
Delusion. Fantasy. Grandiosity. Denial.
My memoir, This is a Story About Ghosts: A Memoir of Borderline Personality Disorder, is now available on Amazon.
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For individual coaching to recover from narcissistic abuse, BPD, or sexual assault, visit https://am-champion.com
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A.M. Champion is the author of Hunted Carrion: Sonnets to a Stalker (KDP, 2024), She Saints & Holy Profanities (Quarterly West, 2019), The Good Girl is Always a Ghost (Black Lawrence Press, 2018), Book of Levitations (Trembling Pillow Press, 2019), Reluctant Mistress (Gold Wake Press, 2013), and The Dark Length Home (Noctuary Press, 2017). Her work appears in Verse Daily, diode, Tupelo Quarterly, Prairie Schooner, Crab Orchard Review, Salamander, New South, Redivider, PANK Magazine, and elsewhere. She was a 2009 Academy of American Poets Prize recipient, a 2016 Best of the Net winner, and a Barbara Deming Memorial Grant recipient. She has degrees in Behavioral Psychology and Creative Writing.