The Fall is an Irish crime drama written and produced by Allan Cubitt. The series takes place in Belfast, Ireland and depicts the life of Paul Spector who becomes the city’s most infamous serial killer. By day, Spector is seemingly normal and lives an average life. He works as a grief counselor and goes home to his two small children and wife at the end of each day. Manipulative and cunning, Spector is able to fulfill his compulsion to kill at night when his family least suspects it. Known as the Belfast Strangler, Paul Spector stalks strong career women of the same likeness until he finally has the opportunity to strangle and kill them. Throughout the series, the viewer gets a deep perspective into Spector’s tough past, allowing them to gain better insight into understanding what prompts him to kill.  Americas fascination with serial killers has been the backbone for murder-mystery TV for decades. One of the most enchanting aspects about serial murderers to date is the pre-meditated emotion behind the act of killing another human being. Spector’s emotion or lack thereof is the real spotlight of this series which poses a very interesting question: Does Paul Spector show symptoms consistent with Antisocial Personality Disorder?

             Though the series never outwardly suggests that Paul Spector suffers from Antisocial Personality Disorder, many of his character traits in addition to his life experiences are brought to light, making it possible to come to a conclusion about why he kills. This question is relevant to the series because the history of Spector’s mental state is never specifically established. It is this in addition to Spector taking his own life at the end of Season three that leaves so many questions still unanswered to the Belfast detective team about his pre-meditation for the murders. Spector’s childhood is touched on, as well as his past relationships, and past behavior. From this past behavior coupled with the actions Paul Spector exhibits in the series, it becomes clear that he is indeed suffering from severe Antisocial Personality Disorder.

             According to the Mayo Clinic article on Antisocial Personality Disorder, “People with antisocial personality disorder tend to antagonize, manipulate or treat others harshly or with callous indifference. They show no guilt or remorse for their behavior.” Paul Spector’s manipulative skills are shown in many ways throughout the series, but most poignantly in his control over Katie, the family babysitter. He is able to actually brainwash Katie into falling in love with him, which assists him in steering clear of the Belfast police force by keeping her quiet. Along with brainwashing Katie, he forces himself upon her sexually on multiple occasions, which is another major symptom of the disease.

             Paul Spector works as a grief counselor during the day, and takes a particular liking to one of his clients whose son had just died. The grief-stricken mother attends counseling with her aggressive and distant husband. During counselling session, the husband quickly recognized Paul’s soft spot for his wife. Flustered, the husband confronted Paul in an aggressive manner threatening him to stay away. Because of this, Paul Spector antagonizes the husband for the duration of the series for his own enjoyment. The husband is eventually killed as a result of one of Spector’s plots to break free of the detective’s watchful eye, not caring that he died as a result. Though he did not kill the husband directly with his two hands, Paul never showed remorse for his victims. Instead, he would cut a lock of hair from each woman he killed and keep it as a trophy. Even when watching family members of the victims heartbroken on the television, Paul showed no compassion or guilt for anything he had done. These examples show that Spector accurately displays personality traits consistent with Antisocial Personality Disorder.

             Antisocial Personality Disorder, or ASPD, develops early on in life, often due to traumatic events taking place early in life hindering the development of personality. The Mayo Clinic writes “Personality is the combination of thoughts, emotions and behaviors that makes everyone unique. It's the way people view, understand and relate to the outside world, as well as how they see themselves. Personality forms during childhood, shaped through an interaction of inherited tendencies and environmental factors.” Spector explains that his mother died after he was left outside a foster home for boys as a baby, where she had commit suicide after a long struggle with drug addiction. In the boy’s home, Spector was physically and sexually abused by the headmaster of the institution along with the majority of the other children staying there. A study conducted in 2011 states that “child sexual abuse could have implications in the capacity of the victims to relate with others, both in the friendship relationships that they could establish with adults as well as the way they related with their peers” (Pereda). Antisocial Personality Disorder is largely based on relationships and communication, so in the event of a traumatic situation taking place when those key concepts are being developed, this may lead one to having symptoms consistent with ASPD. Though Spector doesn’t seem phased when the detective team becomes interested in his assault, it is clear that it was a point in his life that he does not want to re-visit. Spector’s traumatizing sexual abuse as a child is one of the defining character experiences that leads one to the conclusion he is suffering from ASPD.

            Growing up in foster care, Spector lived in solitude and did not have any friends. Without the support of a family, he was forced to keep to himself and did not have anyone to grow up with. “Children and adolescents which become part of child welfare system, whether through foster care, kinship care (placement with relatives) or residential institution care, are at a higher risk of suffering from a mental disorder; this condition has strong negative effects on everyday living and on QOL” (Ferrara). Without close personal relationships in his adolescence, this caused his developing mind to evolve unnaturally and prompted what could have been the start of his Antisocial Personality Disorder. “The child or young person typically has few, if any, friends, and any friends become annoyed by their aggressive behaviour. This often leads to exclusion from many group activities, games and trips, thus restricting the child or young person’s quality of life and experiences. On leaving school, the lack of social skills, low level of qualifications and, possibly, a police record make it harder to gain employment” (National Institute for Health and Care Excellence). This article explains how it is typically common for someone who is suffering from this disease to not have people around them in their adolescent life similar to Paul Spector. The correlation between growing up in foster care institutions and mental health is something that has been studied for decades. “Children in foster care have mental health problems, anxiety, depressive symptoms or general mental difficulties and the overall health care of children who have been established in care for more than six months is significantly worse than for those living in their own homes” (Ferrara). Paul was not able to establish close and personal relationships early on in life, which affected his overall ability to ever make those close connections to people who came into his life.

             An example of Spector’s disconnectedness in relationships would be his wife, Sally. Sally is madly in love with Paul and even fights the accusation when he ultimately gets caught by the Belfast police at the end of the series. Heartbroken, Sally has one last conversation with Paul before he is taken away from his family. Tears run down Sally’s face as the realization of her husband’s doings finally become clear. Paul is unphased by Sally’s outpour of emotion without feeling any remorse or regret for what he had done to his family. This represents Paul’s inability to become close with those he is supposed to love, which is be in direct relation to his lonesome time spent in the foster home, permanently obstructing his ability to form connected relationships and further supports his potential Antisocial Personality Disorder.

             It is of course true that just because Spector is a serial killer, this does not mean he suffers from Antisocial Personality Disorder or any mental disorder at all. Most of the time it is thought that if one is a serial killer, one suffers from Antisocial Personality Disorder. This is actually untrue in most circumstances, and one article even states that “very few serial killers suffer from any mental illness to such a debilitating extent that they are considered to be insane by the criminal justice system. To be classified as legally insane, an individual must be unable to comprehend that an action is against the law at the exact moment the action is undertaken” (Bonn). It is actually a small percentage of killers who actually suffer from Antisocial Personality Disorder. The opposite is commonly thought because ASPD is glorified in the media, almost always correlating it to a diagnosed psychopath who goes around killing people. For so many suffering from this disorder, this is far from the truth. “But I strongly believe the majority of studies done on ASPD are on dangerous criminal 'psychopaths' who are in prison for serious crimes. While there are a huge number of people, like me now, who are not violent or criminal, and live normal lives” (Brill). Antisocial Personality Disorder is one of the most underestimated mental disorders and is often not all it seems to be. It is not just the fact that Spector is a killer that leads one to believe that he is suffering from Antisocial Personality Disorder, but more specifically the sum of all his behavior in addition to the background information we are given.

Though it is true that only a small portion of infamous serial killers do suffer from Antisocial Personality disorder, it can be proven that the behavior displayed in this series from Paul Spector are altogether consistent with those seen in a subject with severe ASPD. According to the National Institute for care and Health Excellence, “To make a diagnosis, at least three behaviours from the 15 listed above have to be present, one for at least 6 months. There is no impairment criterion. There are three subtypes: ‘conduct disorder confined to the family context’, ‘unsocialised conduct disorder’ (where the young person has no friends and is rejected by peers) and ‘socialised conduct disorder’ (where peer relationships are normal).” Throughout the series, it is clear that Spector suffers from much more than just three of the typical Antisocial Personality Disorder Symptoms. Some of these symptoms include lying or breaking promises to those around them, exhibits physical cruelty to other people or animals, steals non-trivial objects, commits crimes, forces another person into sexual activity, and many more. When comparing the actions of Paul Spector to the actions and behaviors of someone exhibiting symptoms of Antisocial Personality Disorder, the comparisons are almost identical. Spector displays most of not all of the symptoms consistent with ASPD, making it highly plausible that this disorder was the cause of the Belfast killings.

             In this series, Paul Spector’s behaviors, emotions, and relationships all provide concrete evidence that he suffers from Antisocial Personality Disorder. Paul exhibits manipulative behavior, allowing him to compulsively kill women in Belfast, Ireland. Without remorse or concern for anyone else’s physical or emotional pain, Spector destroys everything in his path in order to not be caught by Belfast’s leading detective team, and leaves his family without a husband or father. Along with his behavior outwardly shown in the series, his backstory suggests childhood trauma. Growing up in a foster home for boys, Spector was secluded and unable to ever form close relationships with those around him. In addition to this, he was sexually and physically abused in the boy’s home by the headmaster where he was unable to stop it. Antisocial Personality Disorder is first noticed in childhood, and is largely based off of events taking place very early on in life. Spector’s experience with isolation along with physical and sexual abuse all taking place in his childhood are all key indicators that relate to the causes of Antisocial Personality Disorder. It is often thought that Antisocial Personality Disorder is somewhat synonymous with the average defining serial killer, but this is not the case. Paul Spector is not suffering from this disease simply because he is a serial killer, but instead because his everyday mannerisms along with trouble with adolescent development and treatment of everyday relationships that also support this.