10 Mind-Blowing Facts You Never Knew About Hannibal Lecter

In the fictional world of the Baltimore psychology academic circles, none were more respected than Dr. Hannibal Lecter, once surgeon, now eminent expert therapist and author of journals, treating high society and in some cases, reaping financial gain by convincing patients to bequeath him large sums of money in their wills.

Lecter graduated from John Hopkins university and began his own psychiatry practise, despite not even considering psychology a science. From there, Lecter went on to murder at least nine people and was eventually arrested and found to be criminally insane.

Described by Dr. Chilton - Lecter's 'keeper' - as a "pure sociopath", the cannibal psychiatrist would go on to demonstrate his utter contempt for the institution that held him by folding paper tests into origami when examined. His ability to retreat to his 'memory palace' and defend his mind from injections of sodium pentanol were considerable, once giving his examiners a recipe for dip, instead of the required academic insight into the mind of a killer.

Lecter described psychology as "puerile" and that most psychologists were "ham radio enthusiasts and other personality-deficient buffs," always refusing to be categorised by any conventional means or established models traditionally associated with serial killers.

During his imprisonment, Lecter published many papers, reviews and theses on psychology, maintaining a correspondence with many medical professionals, all to the extreme frustration of Chilton, who was constantly thwarted in his attempts to diagnose Lecter.