Psychology Essay About Magneto

This is one of two papers I wrote about Magneto for a Personality class.  I was to choose whoever I wanted and write a paper including a biography, description of his personality, and rating him on the big five personality traits along with what in his life may have shaped him to be the way he is.

Erik Lehnsherr, AKA: Magneto 

Erik Lehnsherr, better known by his mutant alias of Magneto, is a fictional character from the popular X-Men series. He has been seen in comic books and cartoons, but this particular version of him is the one from the movies. In this paper, a “mutant” is a human with mutated genes, causing them to have special powers and abilities, like telekinesis or shape shifting.
Born in Germany in 1930, he was only fourteen years old when his family was separated by Nazi soldiers. During this traumatic experience, he was seen by the Nazis and many others bending the metal gates of the concentration camp Auschwitz with his mind. This caught the attention of a Nazi leader named Sebastian Shaw (under the alias Dr. Klaus Schmidt), who wanted to know more about Erik’s abilities. He placed a coin in front of Erik and tried to have him move it, but young Erik did not know how to control his powers yet, and was therefore unable to move the coin. In trying to get Erik to move more metal with his mind, Shaw murdered Erik’s mother. This got the response Shaw was looking for, and Erik crushed the heads of the two Nazi soldiers who had brought her into Shaw’s office. Erik also threw around many metal tools and lifted a metal table off the ground, demonstrating his power. Shaw commented that the power was controlled by Erik’s emotions. It is not exactly known how Erik escaped Auschwitz and Shaw, presumably he was just released with everyone else at the end of the war and Shaw disappeared. It is also unknown what happened to Erik’s father, but he dedicated his life to avenging his mother’s death by finding and killing Sebastian Shaw.
Erik moved to America in 1949, but after a short time, decided to go back to Europe to continue looking for Shaw. In 1962 he found himself talking to a Swiss banker whom he tortured for information. The banker sent him to a bar, where he found two former Nazi officers. After noticing a photo of them with Shaw, he killed them and continued his search in Miami. He found Shaw on a small yacht, but Shaw now had other mutant friends helping him, including his right hand girl Emma Frost, and Erik was no match. As Shaw escaped, Erik met a few more mutants, including Charles Xavier, and a CIA agent, who were also after Shaw. After some convincing from Charles, Erik teamed up with them to find the man who murdered his mother. The two went on a few different missions together and became very good friends. Charles helped Erik learn how to use his emotions to better control his power.
Finally, Charles and Erik were on their last mission to capture Shaw with their team. Shaw had been recruiting more mutants as well, telling them that they had to wipe out the rest of humanity because mutants could never be understood or accepted by everyone else. In this final battle with Shaw, Erik couldn’t help but notice all of the discrimination against himself and the other mutants by the CIA. There were talks of making them register themselves with the government as mutants, and it was sounding a lot like Nazi Germany to Erik. As promised, he avenged his mother’s death by pushing the same coin from when he first met Shaw through Shaw’s forehead, and all the way out the back. He did it very slowly and deliberately, enjoying every moment. Charles tried very hard to stop him from killing Shaw, knowing that if he committed this act, it would shape Erik’s entire future, but he was unable to change Erik’s mind. After the battle, Erik and Charles and the rest of the mutants were on a beach, with the USA and the Soviet Union naval ships in the ocean by them. The two countries realized how dangerous mutants can be, and decided to blow up the beach together by firing missiles at them. The missiles they fired were made of metal, so Erik turned them all around and fired them back toward to naval vessels. Charles fought Erik and managed to stop the counter attack so that nobody was hurt, except Charles, who was shot in the spine, losing the ability to move his legs. Erik announced that unmutated humans were now the enemy, and recruited some of the mutants from their team to join him as he left on a quest. He said a quick yet emotional goodbye to Charles, then went and found Emma Frost, his former enemy’s closest partner, and invited her to join his side. This is when Erik insisted everyone call him Magneto, taking on a whole new identity.
Erik became a “villain," fighting to find ways to turn everyone into a mutant, and saying that these mutations were the next stage in human evolution and the rest of humanity need to evolve. He did switch sides from time to time, when mutants were in trouble and needed his help to survive, or the whole world was in danger and could not exist without his assistance. He and Charles remained friends in a way, sometimes fighting, but always finding their way back to each other, and never quite wishing death upon the other. He entered a romantic relationship with a shape shifting mutant named Raven who called herself Mystique, until she was attacked with a virus undoing her mutation and making her “normal," at which time he disowned her.
Erik is a very dark and violent person with a lot of internalized anger, but he also has a way of remaining fairly calm most of the time. He is quite charismatic, which he regularly demonstrates when trying to recruit mutants to join his side. He kind of charms them into believing what he believes. Although he is often trying to destroy people, he genuinely believes he is a good person. Mutants are in a way always in danger, and he thinks that protecting them from the potential threat, even if the threat is just in his head, is more important than the lives of unmutated humans. Erik is somewhat paranoid, and always thinks people are out to get him and the rest of the mutants. This paranoia is probably fueled by his memories of the holocaust where he lost his family, as he seems to think that the exact same thing will inevitably be done to mutants someday in an attempt to fully wipe them out. Ironically, Erik is trying to do the same thing to unmutated humans, even going so far as to alter a machine so that it would torture all of them to death.
Though Erik is violent, angry, and paranoid, he is incredibly sophisticated. Some believe that his mutation has caused increased intelligence along with his ability to control metal with his mind. He is well dressed and respectful toward other mutants, even in battle. Charles and Erik are known for their chess game, which they regularly play, even when Erik is in prison. He is also very strong willed. When he decides to do something, absolutely nothing will stop him from trying, which can be seen in his quest to find and kill Sebastian Shaw.
Erik has a very strong personality with rather defined traits. The traits can be examined using a nomothetic approach and rating his personality by using the big five personality traits. His openness to experience is a little tricky, however. When it comes to things like art and starting new life quests, Erik is very open, but at the same time, he is very stuck in his ways. If he starts something new, he’s going to keep it right along with everything else. A good example of this is when he realizes just how real the danger to mutants is, and dedicates his life to making the world a safer place for all of them. He was still determined to kill Shaw, but now had a new purpose in life as well. There is no changing his mind about anything, as all of his beliefs are unshakeable. He lacks flexibility, and would therefore rank just a little low on openness to experience. Conscientiousness seems pretty straight forward, but also very dependent on perspective. To Erik, he ranks incredibly high on conscientiousness. He has an idea of how the world should be and what is best for everyone, and he strives to turn this fantasy into reality. He continues fighting to destroy or mutate mankind, in order to make the world “a better place," so while mass murder doesn’t SOUND conscientious to many people, it absolutely is to him. He has incredible self-discipline, and plans everything out very specifically. He very rarely does anything spontaneous at all. Erik rates a bit lower on extroversion. Although he regularly seeks out other mutants to join his cause, he’s a rather reserved person. As mentioned before, he is always pretty calm. He stays fairly quiet and, other than his recruitment attempts, he keeps to himself. He is a leader of a very large group of people, and can be compared to Hitler in the way he leads, not really socializing with any of his followers, but simply appearing to give orders and information. Agreeableness is just as difficult to explain as openness. Erik can be thought to be quite agreeable, in that he is charming and convincing, and rather than arguing he slowly tries to convince people to see his way, but all in all, he’s probably a tiny bit low on agreeableness. He is very stubborn and difficult to persuade, and has opinions that differ from most people’s. He also can be quite paranoid, making him less agreeable, but also very high on neuroticism. He is a very angry person, and always looking over his shoulder. Even the non-mutant people who could probably be considered allies, he considers foes, and accuses of hating himself and all mutants out of fear and misunderstanding.
To evaluate Erik’s personality from an idiographic perspective, his main character traits would be paranoia, charismatic, angry, calm, and sophisticated, which were all explained and demonstrated above. Many of them have been shaped by events of his life and his attempts to adapt to his surroundings.