Overview
Doctor Psycho is a fictional character appearing in DC Comics publications and related media, commonly as a recurring adversary of the superhero Wonder Woman. First appearing in Wonder Woman, issue #5 (1943), written by Wonder Woman creator William Moulton Marston, the character would become one of the Amazing Amazon's most persistent enemies, reappearing throughout the Golden, Silver, Bronze, and Modern Age of Comics.
Over the decades, Dr. Psycho has undergone several minor updates as comics continuities have shifted and evolved, though his distinctive physical appearance has remained largely faithful to artist Harry G. Peter's original 1943 design. After DC Comics rebooted its continuity in 1985 (in a publication event known as the Crisis on Infinite Earths), Wonder Woman, her supporting characters and many of her foes, were re-imagined and reintroduced. Prior to this reboot, Doctor Psycho demonstrated a command over the occult and was able to harness supernatural energies to project illusions. Since his Post-Crisis reintroduction, the character has been presented as an extremely powerful telepath and telekinetic. Despite these changes, Doctor Psycho has consistently been portrayed as a misogynistic person of short stature who has mental illness (ranging from mild obsessiveness to full-blown dissociation).
Doctor Psycho made his animation debut as a regular in Harley Quinn, voiced by Tony Hale.
Background
The character of Doctor Psycho was created by William Moulton Marston, creator of Wonder Woman and author of her original adventures, as an allegory of the folly of abnormal emotions such as misogyny and other hatreds, as well as to be another embodiment of what he called "less actively developed men" (emotionally misaligned) who needed emotional reform by a love leader (Wonder Woman). William Moulton Marston's creation of Doctor Psycho drew upon his interest in metaphysics and spiritualism. Marston, a psychologist, created Doctor Psycho as a murderous psychopath with an intense hatred of women. The character was partly inspired by actor Lon Chaney ("Man of a thousand faces") and partly by Marston's undergraduate advisor Hugo Münsterberg, who was opposed to women's suffrage and feminism, and was into metaphysics. Doctor Psycho was also one of several villains created for Wonder Woman who were occultists, beguiling the masses for their own self-enriching purposes.
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