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.