The character Patrick Jane has a
very high IQ and exceptional natural abilities. His early training in deceptive
arts, manipulation, sleight of hand, gambling, and criminal skills allowed
these natural abilities to be fully developed. A lack of exposure to basic morality
and moral norms, and also a lack of unconditional love, contributed to his
criminal achievements as well as his pathology. But Jane is not a pure criminal.
Jane is attracted to and clearly fascinated by lack of guile (as exemplified by
children) and integrity (modeled by Lisbon and other cops, mostly).
Jane has a pathological ability
to con, trick and even kill (with little to no hesitation) anyone he perceives
as being morally corrupt. This propensity is mitigated by the fact that he
holds his own amoral behavior to the same standards. He is not himself immune
to his own contempt. But he increasingly he shows he is capable of positive
emotions such as love, respect, guilt, and personal responsibility, and can act
according to those higher principles.
Mathematical
Jane clearly has a highly
developed natural math ability, as well as extensive self-training in probability,
as both a con man and as a gambler. He seems able to mentally calculate
probabilities related to intuitive guesses, and he has an unusually low
threshold for statistics-based decision making. While scientists generally have
an extremely high margin for error, Jane seems quite willing to wager quite a
lot on a very slim margin. Another characteristic of his mathematical skill is
his ability to manage bias. While normal people may suffer from bias due to “anchoring”
and “framing” effects, Jane seems very resistant to this and as a result
improves the accuracy of his mathematical estimations.
Memory
Jane has a good memory, which he
has honed using memorization techniques (Memory Palace), but he does not appear
to have a photographic memory. This is probably a good thing since photographic
memory is rare, of usually limited range, and can be associated with defects in
the abstract processing or social abilities (which for Jane are if anything,
heightened). Although he seems to have a very limited formal education (did not
even attend high school) he is an autodidact and is never without reading
material.
Observation
Jane has an unusually high
ability to recognize and decode the most subtle human behaviors related to
internal emotional states. He probably has a strong natural ability to do this,
which was refined by his practice as a con man specializing as a psychic and as
a carnival “mind” reader. In the show it is revealed that as a teenager in the
carnival he spent time looking a people and practicing his observational abilities.
He also honed his “mind-reading” skills using “probe” techniques. He often asks
seemingly silly questions, invades people’s personal space, and uses other
means to throw people off guard to elicit more telling reactions. He uses his
skills at misdirection to pick their pockets as well as their mind, revealing important
clues.
Manipulation
As mentioned, Jane uses his
skills as a close-work magician, namely misdirection and sleight of hand and
pocket picking, to reveal hidden clues. He also is an accomplished actor and
often uses that skill to manipulate people’s trust to make them reveal more
about their intentions than they would otherwise. He uses his personal charm
and good looks to great effect as well. He is not shy about acting silly or
ridiculous or even vulnerable to make himself appear harmless and unthreatening,
which induces others to be more revealing.
Most dramatically, Jane seems to
have an unusually high ability as a hypnotist, which he uses on occasion, even
apparently without his subject’s consent, to get them to lower their guard, answer
his questions, and to plant post-hypnotic suggestions. Interestingly, it seems
that Jane himself is particularly resistant to manipulation by others, this is
perhaps telling as to his psychopathology. He is not exactly heartless, but he
does seem to have little ego and is not easily manipulated emotionally.
Asceticism
As part of Jane’s self-contempt
related to his guilt for his part in his family’s murder, and also for his
former life as a charlatan and thief, Jane engages in self-denial. He seems to
be loaded with money but spends little on himself and seems to not care about
money. His monk-like existence in a dirty storage room at the police station or
in a long term motel is bit disingenuous though because what is he really
sacrificing? If you don’t care about something it’s easy to forgo. He does take
pleasure though, in a particularly childlike ways. He loves nature, but doesn’t
seek out that pleasure, but instead takes advantage of the locales of the various
cases to get what enjoyment he can from the surroundings. He also enjoys simple
foods, tea, ice cream, eggs, etc.
Rudeness
Jane is characteristically rude
to most other people. Part of this rudeness is deliberate, when he is probing
suspects, where he says disconcerting things to throw people off. Also, he
often stares at people, even though it is probably not necessary for him to do
this, since in other scenes he will often pick up on a subtle gesture or “tell”
without appearing to even glance at the person. If he feels he was mistaken
about a suspect- that they really aren’t lying, for example, he often
apologizes afterwards. He doesn’t like to be touched himself, but this doesn’t
keep him from invading other people’s space and touching them, but only when
necessary, although he does use a brief touch to comfort someone, once in a while.
Vigilante-ism
Patrick is a defiant vigilante,
but he accepts personal responsibility for this. He knows what he is doing, he
is righteous about it, but he expects to be punished for it. He is willing to take that risk to avenge his
family of course but also to protect
others who are innocent. His actions clearly have caused the deaths of other
people, both directly and indirectly, but as long as the victims are in some
way guilty themselves, he doesn’t seem to mind. So far there hasn’t been any
clear case of innocent “collateral damage” related to his vigilante-ism, but
who knows when or if that will occur, and what his response will be. Besides
Red John and other serial killers, he has a special disregard for liars and
charlatans, probably because of the before mentioned self-hatred regarding his own
past.
