The Psychology of Rick and Morty (Season 3 Spoiler Free!)

Rick and Morty have a very interesting psychological relationship.
And after binge-watching the first two seasons, I knew I just had to analyze them!
Psychology is very interesting, and their character development also teaches us a very
valuable lesson in life, one that I hope you will see after watching this analysis.
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Rick Sanchez is a 60 year old mad scientist.
Known for his inventive, though often unpleasant and morally
ambiguous personality, Rick is often found traveling to different
universes and dimensions to further his scientific studies.
Though questionable morals have lead him
to being convicted of well..."everything" he has been
known to do the right thing on occasion but mostly remains a
chaotic personality.
While we don’t know too much about Rick’s past,
what we do know is that he was an absentee father for most of Beth’s
life, he has been traveling dimensions since at least his
college days, and at some point in this Rick’s life he knew Morty as
an infant.
Rick is a complicated mess of many disorders and issues
and it’s hard to pinpoint exactly which mental issues he may have,
we’ve seen him suffer from depression, alcoholism, and general
psychopathy.
He also has a pessimistic, if not, Nihilistic world view.
Let’s take a look at his depression first.
As we discussed in the psychology of Sans the symptoms of
depression are as follows: Fatigue or loss of energy almost
every day.
Feelings of worthlessness or guilt almost every day.
Impaired concentration, indecisiveness.
Insomnia or hypersomnia.
Markedly diminished interest or pleasure in almost all activities
nearly every day.
Restlessness or feeling slowed down Recurring thoughts of death or
suicide And Significant weight loss or gain.
While Rick doesn’t seem to exhibit as many of these symptoms as Sans
did, we can link his behavior to a few, such as his feelings of anger
even over small matters, his disinterest in anything but cold
hard science, and his attempted suicide in the episode "Auto Erotic
Assimilation."
Rick chooses, much like real world sufferers, to hide
his pain and even through his catchphrase in season one "Wubba
lubba dub-dub!" he coats the real
message with an excited and cheerful tone.
Its revealed in the season 1 finale that "Wubba lubba
dub-dub" means "I am in great pain.
Please help me." in his best friend, Birdperson’s, native
language.
Rick is a genius and has seen many horrible things in his
life through his adventures, and he chooses to use drugs and alcohol to
numb himself from getting too attached to a world he views as
ultimately doomed.
His substance abuse and alcoholism is an
extension of his depression.
This is a common practice amongst people
who suffer from depression, and it can in turn make the depression much
worse.
This also plays into his nihilistic world view.
Evidence supporting this comes from how easily he picks
up and leaves from realities.
Now talking about Rick’s psychopathy, we can dig a bit
deeper into his character.
In case you’re unfamiliar, psychopathy has
some of the following symptoms.
Superficial charm Inflated sense of self-worth
Constant need for stimulation Lying pathologically
Conning others; being manipulative Having Shallow emotions
Callousness; lack of empathy Poor control over behavior
Promiscuous sexual behavior Behavioral problems early in life
Lack of realistic, long-term goals Being impulsive
Being irresponsible Blaming others and refusing to
accept responsibility.
Criminal acts And Now if we break down what we know
of Rick, we can see nearly all of these symptoms.
Rick has been known to be charming, at least from what
we know of him in social situations, he does tend to have everyone on his
side.
Rick also exhibits an arrogant personality saying things
like "Whatever you are asking, the answer is I’m amazing."
Rick lies, often, usually to further his own
end goal.
I mean He’s manipulated an entire race of aliens into blowing
themselves up.
*boom*
Though shown to care about Morty at times, he’s not
known to care about anyone or anything else’s well being, except
for maybe Beth and Summer.
On the subject of promiscuous behavior he
got with a hive minded planet of people, and in order to get things
right said "We need a hang glider and a crotchless uncle sam costume,
and I want the entire field of your largest stadium covered end to end
with naked redheads, and I want the stands packed with every man that
remotely resembles my father."
So yeah, you could argue that he is
certainly some kind of promiscuous.
He may have unrealistic goals, but since he’s a genius (and its a
cartoon) he is able to make these goals a reality.
The last few symptoms of being impulsive,being
irresponsible, blaming others, and criminal acts are present in almost
every episode of the series.
This, in terms of Rick’s character, is a technique used to make his
humanity shine through when we happen get examples of it.
In the episode "Close Rick-Counters of the Rick
Kind" that introduces The Council of Ricks, we get the most human
response from Rick we’ve ever seen.
Rick cries over the thought of losing Morty when having his brain
downloaded by Evil Rick.
So while Rick is nearing the level of the
Joker in terms of psychopathy, even to the point where he does seem to break
the fourth wall, he has a few human tethers to keep his humanity more
grounded.
Such as Morty.
*transition to MORTY*
Morty is Rick’s 14 year old grandson who often appears anxious
and sometimes unwarrantedly aggressive.
For much of this Morty’s life, Rick was absent just
like he was in Beth’s life.
During the whole of Morty’s life his
parents have been reluctantly staying together for the kids.
This causes them to constantly have
arguments.
Morty, because of this, has developed an inability to
control his emotions well, and also the anxiety disorder we seem to observe
in the series.
This happens commonly in these kinds of households, at
least according to the findings put forth in the journal "Development
and Psychopathology."
While Morty isn’t a person who constantly has
violent outbursts, he does exhibit them from time to time, and is
known to be more sensitive than the typical person.
Morty also has a fairly pronounced stutter.
Stutters can be indicators of anxiety and
stress.
A contributing factor to Morty’s anxiety are also the
adventures Rick drags him on.
For example in one episode, Morty was
the victim of attempted sexual assault, which is shown to cause
him some trauma as it would anyone in the same situation, he has
buried his own body, and even been made to kill a friend for the
greater good.
Often times Rick doesn’t care what danger Morty is
in.
As stated before, Rick has shown some worry and care for Morty
as evidence by the sacrifice made by 1/64th of Rick’s split timelines
when he gave Morty his collar.
However, even from the intro of the series we see Rick leave a Morty
behind when he jumps into a portal.
Morty has been with Rick through drunken stupors and even while a
drunken Rick is driving his ship.
Morty also regresses his frustrations with the way his
grandfather does things.
This leads to Morty having a violent outburst
in the episode "Look Who’s Purging Now" where Morty murders people
during a Purge event.
Morty is an impressionable teen and we can see
a bit of Rick come out in him from time to time (you know...outside
the fact that they’re voiced by the same person.)
This has caused some tension between him and his dad, Jerry, who
wants Morty to be a normal kid.
And This furthers a tension with Jerry and Beth because Beth wants her
father in her family’s life.
Its a cycle that ends up frustrating
Morty even more.
At the same time we see Morty developing the same
world view that Rick has.
It shows itself in "Rixty Minutes" when
Morty says "Nobody exists on purpose.
Nobody belongs anywhere.
Everyone is gonna die."
though he says this in a much more
inspirational context, it still echoes Rick’s nihilistic view.
While Rick and Morty are family, they have more of a friendship than
what you would see in most relationships as theirs.
Its hard to pin point, but you could argue
they have a symbiosis, psychologically, physically we know
that’s the case since Mortys’ are considered camouflage by Ricks.
In the sense of their psychological
relationship, there are arguments that are detrimental to Morty, but
on the other side, Morty has shown some increase in confidence because
of it.
So perhaps, while the relationship we see is making Morty
uncomfortable in the short term, Rick is preparing him for the "real
world" and making him braver by making him face his fears.
while At the same time Rick does use his berating to keep
Morty humble because he says "A cocky Morty can lead to some big
problems."
So it can still be argued that its out of Rick’s own
needs.
Rick and Morty are a very big gray area of moral and psychological
concepts.
But that’s part of the charm, and while we see Rick
represent the worst of humanity at times, he also represents the best
on occasion, mostly due to Morty’s voice of reason.
Morty is stuck in the middle, he has more humanity
than Rick, but often it gets pushed to the side by Rick.
Morty is the innocence that Rick no longer has,
While Rick represents the cynical world view attributed to adulthood.
While they are, in a sense, opposites, What Rick and Morty represent as a
duo is the ability to balance eachother and not become someone who is
completely naive or someone who just sees no good in the world.
Much like the relationship of Rick and Morty the challenge of us as
humans is to balance our innocence with our cynicism.
To be prepared for the real world and life as adults, but not completely lose our humanity
we have given to us as kids.
Life is a balance.
And Balance is beautiful.

The Psychology of Rick and Morty (Season 3 Spoiler Free!) | Gnoggin

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