A giant of Scottish fiction, Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh, was released in 1993. It tells the story of Mark Renton and his friends in 1980s Edinburgh as they navigate through heroin addiction, violence, brittle friendships, the emerging HIV epidemic and high stakes drug deals.

(Please note this psychological portrait contains spoilers for the book)

Through the course of the novel, we witness Mark ‘Rents’ Renton’s struggles with substance use, featuring the push and pull of withdrawal and searching for his next hit. We are given glimpses into Rents early experiences in childhood, primarily the impact of growing up with a brother with complex health needs and disabilities. This may have contributed to Rents’ sense of being different from others and not fitting into society. As an adult we see his full rejection of society and forgoing forming meaningful relationships with others, appearing to instead use other people for specific transactional purposes. Irvine Welsh explores Rents’ substance use as a means of regulating his emotions and to block out trauma. The consequences of these and other protective strategies are staggering: from the increasing grip of heroin addiction, deaths of friends, dropping out of university, losing jobs, a growing series of criminal endeavours, to the ultimate betrayal of his friends. These dire consequences only seem to galvanise and reinforce Rents’ sense of isolation, shame and failure.

Irvine Welsh explained his approach to his characters in an interview with the Independent newspaper:

“I like to get the psychology right. I like a book where it feels like you’re locked in a room with one of them. They’re sitting on the next bar stool, next to you on the bus. You might not necessarily want them there. But they’re there anyway. They are in your face, you can feel their hot breath on your neck. I like the immediacy and intimacy of that kind of writing. So I always strive to create characters that so are so vivid and real they actually exist off the page.”

Irvine Welsh, Interview in the Independent, 29^th March 2018

With Mark Renton, Irvine Welsh has captured the psychology of the character. There are sections of the book that you read and feel a visceral and physical response to. At times Rents’ actions and how he treats others can challenge your compassion for him. All of this creates a character, that without doubt feels like he exists off the page. It is these qualities of character and writing, that make Mark Renton an ideal character to explore through psychological formulation. I explore all of this in the psychological portrait below.

Whilst I hope this is of interest to readers and fans of Trainspotting, I fear Rents would not be quite so agreeable and open to this attempt to understand his psychology…

“Basically, aw ah ask is that cunts mind their ain business and ah’ll dae the same. Why is it that because ye use hard drugs every cunt feels that they have a right to dissect and analyse ye?”

Sorry Rents.