QMy villain sees and hears Hitler telling him to kill Jews and other people. He also kills people who get in his way, with no conscience or feeling about his crimes. He is building a private gas chamber and plans to kill a couple of people he hates, and he sees his own powers as omnipotent and has no remorse about his crimes. How would I explain the psychology of his insanity? Is he psychotic, narcissistic, delusional, or what?
TS
AWhat you’re describing is an individual who suffers from narcissistic, grandiose, paranoid schizophrenia with delusional and psychotic components. A little sociopathy too. Because the gurus in every field of medicine argue over terminology, it varies depending on who you read. What those in the ivory towers of academia call a disorder often has little relationship to the language doctors in the trenches use. But something like the above description is what your psychiatrist might say when speaking about this individual.
He is schizophrenic because he has a severe mental disorder that has caused a break with reality. He is delusional in that he believes he is omnipotent and all-important. He is psychotic because he is hearing voices that do not really exist. A delusion is merely a misinterpretation of something in the environment. An individual with a paranoid delusion might see someone looking at him and believe the person is a threat. If he sees two people talking, he might believe they are talking about him. These are simply misinterpretations of actual events. In a psychosis, the things perceived by the individual are made up in his head. He hears voices or sees pink elephants or feels bugs crawling over him when none are actually there. He believes things to be true that have no basis in reality.
Since your character has no remorse, he has some sociopathic tendencies. He sounds like an interesting character, but I hope you off him by the end of your tale.