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We want to express our deep appreciation to the editors of Contemporary Psychoanalysis for accepting our proposal to guest edit this timely issue on psychopathy and human evil.
In the pages that follow, our readers will find thought-provoking articles exploring our theme from a variety of perspectives. We hope to spark your interest in this important topic and hope it generates further interest.
In “Outsiders to Love: The Psychopathic Character and Dilemma”, Elizabeth Howell describes key characteristics of psychopaths, including the power of deceit in a world that generally runs on trust, and the psychopath's ability to tap into and intermesh with peoples' dissociated need, greed, fears, and sadism. Psychopathic character is understood in terms of a dissociative structure of interlocking self-states in which ruthless instrumentality is dominant. The evil in psychopathy originates in a feeling of being an outsider to love, outside and envious of the fabric of the social order and emotional world shared by others. It is argued that although it is human to have some characteristics of evil, sadism, and psychopathy, psychopaths themselves fit into a taxon, a category of their own.
Sheldon Itzkowitz examines our topic from a broad psychoanalytic perspective in “Psychopathy and Human Evil: An Overview”. The article explores the personality characteristics, organization, and cognitive style
of the psychopath, as well as the role of superego pathology, contributions from the field of attachment, and the manner in which dissociation plays a role in psychopathy and the potential for conflating this with the dissociative structuring of the mind. The article closes with a brief discussion about “corporate” or “successful psychopaths” and how they have a negative impact on culture and society.
The relationship among sexual desire, violent death, and fundamentalist beliefs that lead to acts of terrorism is explored by J. Reid Meloy in “Sexual Desire, Violent Death, and the True Bel