SocraticGadfly: Timothy Treadwell was really fricking nuts

September 06, 2006

Timothy Treadwell was really fricking nuts

I mean, really.

I had read about Treadwell before was killed by grizzlies. When he was killed, I posted to a couple of environmental blogs that I believed was crazy. Not just “nutbar” in an everyday sense, but mentally ill in some way.

As I write this post, I am in the middle of watching “Grizzly Man,” and realizing just how crazy Treadwell was.

In addition to the bipolar disorder that his one girlfriend indicated he had, if I were a counseling psychologist, I would probably also diagnose him with histrionic personality disorder with delusions of grandeur.

If his parents were right that he had an apparently normal childhood, he seemingly regressed into a more childlike, or even more childish, state as part of this.

Director Werner Herzog, while not directly commenting so much on the mental illness, does use the word “paranoid” in talking about his worries about poachers. Knowing Treadwell, he probably considered legitimate hunters to be poachers, given that he thought bears in a large national park somehow still needed his protection.

On Treadwell as a naturalist, many people, such as the curator of an Aleut museum, I think correctly aver that he did more damage to bears, through habituating them to humans, than he benefited them. (This analysis applies in spades to the foxes he thought were puppies.)

Related to that is the question of hypocrisy, if the word “hypocrisy” didn’t overlook the huge blind spots into his own personality that Treadwell had. Treadwell at one point excoriates tourists for throwing rocks at a bear, apparently to get it to pose. Meanwhile, he has no problem playing with bears, touching bears, and otherwise disturbing bears.

He talks about “The Park Service … lets tourists in with their fucking cameras” while refusing to take a look in the mirror, or even realizing that he needs to take a look.

It’s clear that Treadwell was not a real expert on grizzly bears in particular or wildlife biology in general

I don’t mean it to sound like I believe in some sort of divine justice, or karma, but Timothy Treadwell did indeed get exactly what he deserved.

Herzog puts it best when he says at some point Treadwell’s movie filming moved beyond a wildlife movie to something greater, with himself as the subject.

If you’ve haven’t seen “Grizzly Man,” I heartily recommend it. The framing story Herzog tells about Treadwell, wrapped around Treadwell’s own video, is great.

Update, Sept. 10: On further reflection, I think Herzog pulled some punches in trying to get a grasp on the growing-up years of Treadwell, or whatever his given surname was. The degree of his various mental problems says to me they didn’t spring up overnight. How quickly he took to alcohol and drugs in college suggest that didn’t happen overnight, either.

In short, I don’t totally buy his parents’ claim about him having an idyllic childhood. Either they’re in denial, or they were missing some signs and clues while Treadwell was in high school.

Herzog pulls his punches by not interviewing high-school era friends, principals and teachers to try to flesh out the portrait of the adolescent Treadwell.

18 comments:

Anonymous said...

good observation, he was " protecting bears" in a park where bear hunting was prohibited and rigidly enforced. refused common sense safety procedures. tragedy is he got someone else killed.

upbeat01 said...

Proves that bears do eat nuts.

+wordphan said...

Watching GRIZZLY MAN again. I notice he has incipient echolalia. He refers to himself in the third person often; he even talks about his sexual prowess. This would be an ideal study in personality disorders; he's cornered the market on them. Too bad he had to take another human being with him to die a most ferocious death. Mindless!

Teacher2021 said...

As a special ed student, I believe echolalia is a symptom of people who usually have the disorder of autism. The person with the symptom, usually repeats a phrase over and over or usually repeats what another person says. Timothy did not display this symptom.

clare said...

What mental illness treadwell had continues to be debated...what is crystal clear is that he was wholly unstable. It makes wonder more about his 'friends'....you have to be a little wanker yourself to be in a friendship with such instability.

clare said...

The type of mental illness is an interesting debate, but one thing is crystal clear: he was mad as a hatter. To he his friend and not see this puts one in the category of a wanker.

Deplorable Lisa said...

Just watched "Grizzly Man"....here are my thoughts on Timothy:

Dude was straight up nuts, mentally unstable. He struggled with living amongst society because he was grossly insecure, both with his failed dreams of acting and his sexuality. I'm just gonna say it--dude was flat out gay and didn't want to be. Apparently over the 13 years he was camping with the bears he brought numerous women along, almost all wish to remain anonymous. His business partner, the one who got his watch (why did they give it to her and why not his parents??), said they lived together for 20 years but dated for 3....any man who is straight is not gonna continue living with their ex for THAT long...she knew he was gay. He was completely reckless with his activities...sure, he may have cared about the bears but his filming always focused on him...he was a wannabe actor who couldn't cut it in Hollywood and the only way to fulfill his dreams of being on camera was to pretend he was all into the nature scene. He said his goal every summer was to protect the bears BUT they didn't need protection, they were already in a PROTECTED ENVIRONMENT!!!! The real tragedy in all this is him getting his friend killed in the process. In her diary she wrote how scared she was of the bears--but I guess she blindly believed Tim knew what he was doing, that he was a pro at this which he was not. She even wrote that she planned on breaking up with him.

Average Joe said...

This film is deeply disturbing on many levels. I have no mental-health training, but even so, I can see this guy is crazy. What I wonder about, though, is the mental health of his friends interviewed in the film. I used to live in California in the 70's, and Treadwell's friends exhibit the same flower-child mentality (to coin a phrase) as people I met there. In all seriousness, what IS that? Treadwell surrounded himself with people as delusional as he was. Someone needed to recognize his aberrant thinking and get this guy some help, but no one did. I would appreciate some mental-health analysis of that! Thank you.

Nashville horse man said...

I just watched the movie with my two oldest boys ages 15/17 because I love Herzog . We all came very quickly to two conclusions . Treadwell was psychotic and a repressed homosexual. No question, I'm guessing compensatory narcissism etc . His folks are out to lunch or it was all late onset. I feel horrible for the poor woman with him. Given his self loathing which fueled the compensatory narcissism I bet he felt honore to die by the bear. And the bear was just being a bear....and died for it cause some goofball served himself up as the meal

C.Hite said...

If they'd been true friends, they'd have arranged to Baker Act him for a proper evaluation.
That may have at least saved the life of his poor, devoted qirlfriend.

C.Hite said...

You, sir, are exactly right on every point.

C.Hite said...

You already nailed it, read my reply to the gentleman below and a few others above. I actually did a search after seeing the documentary to see if others thought about it as I did. And it appears we most all agree. Hertzog probably thought the same but decided not to go there... he did interview a few people who talked about the actual harm he was doing to the bears however, and how he caused the tragic death of the girl.

Kell Brigan said...

Re. throwing rocks at the bears. That's the result of advice given to tourists/hunters by the Parks Department. Nobody's trying to hurt them -- it's just to reinforce the idea for the bears that they should stay away from humans. (I live in Arizona, and we deal with coyotes the same way, i.e. making a racket and yelling at them. They shouldn't get too comfortable around people, for their sake and ours.)

Butterflyliz said...

Watched the film so sad I thought there was something off about treadmill but who am I to judge. So sorry he died and Amie may they rest in paradise and the brown bear to

Unknown said...

Watch it again. He really did repeat phrases a lot.

Anonymous said...

Treadmill....ha ha

James said...

Treadmill... hilarious

Anonymous said...

I fully beleive he had AS in some form.