The Tyranny of Malice - exploring the dark side of character and culture by Joseph H. Berke. Published by  Simon and Schuster, London 1988;  444 pages, £ 16.00 hardback.

The aim of this lengthy book as declared on its sleeve by the author, Dr Joseph Berke, is ‘to develop a detailed understanding of our capacity for destruction, as well as for making good’. What is true for the individual psyche, claims the author, is also the case when looking at cultural, social, political and economical phenomena. He puts forward the relatively straightforward thesis that inherent in our culture, as in the psyche, is a conflict between life and death, good and evil, light and darkness. For the individual a denial of the negative, dark, destructive elements will bring about severe psychopathology. When such a denial is done by society, grave cultural, economical and political calamities will follow, some of an international magnitude. Only full recognition of both good and evil, and the chance to repair the real as well as the imaginary damage caused by evil, would restore the health of the individual, mitigate the cultural tyranny, create a more benign culture and presumably bring peace and harmony to the world.

The book is in three parts. Part One explores the nature of malice and its various representations. ‘Envy, greed and jealousy are the negative constituents of character and culture’ (p. 268). This is done through examining the myth of the evil eye, the concepts of penis envy, narcissism, womb envy and the attacking of the breast. Myths, folklore and social behaviour theories have recognised Evil and its expressions as a permanent feature of culture, even before the mind was monopolised by the specialists. The common wisdom in relation to them was passed on through tales, poems and sayings (p. 44):

With the help of sometimes tragic, sometimes humorous anecdotes, ranging from Paul McCartney to Siriono of Bolivia, Berke claims that most societies have developed ways of dealing with the damage caused by envy. The fear of success is apparently t