That study seems to have had a massive impact that worsened his insecurities and his hatred for the world. There are other factors though:
In school (and maybe even in university), he was always the smartest person in the room, years ahead of his peers. That made it incredibly hard for him to find friends.
Because was that intelligent and talented, he felt entitled to a teaching position while he was still working on his Master and PhD degrees but his preferred university refused so he had to go somewhere else. That probably caused a lot of frustration and resentment.
When he was about 25, he thought he might be trans and decided to see a psychiatrist to figure out if he should seek gender reassignment treatment. He chickened out at the last moment, talked about something else and apparently had a really bad therapy session. Maybe if he had lived 50 years later, he would have had the opportunity to figure out who he is.
He had always been an outsider who felt the wold was treating him unfairly. No idea if that was paranoia, narcissism, just a lack of good social contacts or a mix of all of that but in the end, some stupid psychological experiment turned it all up to 11.
You know how many queer and nerdy people joke about leaving everything behind and moving to a cabin in the woods? He did that. And then he went a step further and hurt people. Really makes you think how many marginalized people are just one really traumatic experience away from losing it. And instead of trying to help, society slowly reverts back to casting them out, just to be surprised when something happens.
That study seems to have had a massive impact that worsened his insecurities and his hatred for the world. There are other factors though:
He had always been an outsider who felt the wold was treating him unfairly. No idea if that was paranoia, narcissism, just a lack of good social contacts or a mix of all of that but in the end, some stupid psychological experiment turned it all up to 11.
You know how many queer and nerdy people joke about leaving everything behind and moving to a cabin in the woods? He did that. And then he went a step further and hurt people. Really makes you think how many marginalized people are just one really traumatic experience away from losing it. And instead of trying to help, society slowly reverts back to casting them out, just to be surprised when something happens.