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We have now entered the diagnostic and psychodynamic landscape of the evildoers, the wicked ones, in psychology: psychopaths and sadists. If we think about the psychology of wickedness, these are the men we must study and understand, yet fear. (Meloy, 2001, p. 171)
Not all psychopaths are in prison – some are in the boardroom.” (Babiak, Neumann, & Hare, 2010)
Even more denied than death, is evil—along with its incarnation in human form, the psychopath. Yet, it is imperative now that the topics of psychopathy and human evil no longer be denied. Before us are terrifying signs of societal ethical collapse: increasingly violent cultural divides, climate destruction, the rise of global terrorism, and the specter of global nuclear disaster.
Today, both words, “evil” and “psychopathy,” are emotionally loaded. It has become almost impolite, or seemingly “moralistic,” to speak of evil and psychopathy, or of any person's behavior as evil—Hitler, Stalin, Milosevic, Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer, Aileen Wuornos, Rosemary West, the Armenian genocide, the Shoah, Nanking, Darfur, the current crisis with the Islamic State, and other massive atrocities notwithstanding. The topics of evil and psychopathy have long been marginalized and neglected—even dissociated—in psychoanalysis. Given the shockingly brutal and tragic events that have occurred in the United States
and throughout the world during the last century, we believe it is crucial to explore and understand why psychoanalysis has been particularly silent on the topic of evil.
With respect to silence from psychoanalysts on the concepts of psychopathy and human evil, several colleagues have commented that these ideas smack of morality and religious values and should not be a topic of consideration for a psychoanalytic journal. However, both moralism and egregious lapses of morality have been ever present, but often not confronted face to face in the ongoing history of psychoanalysis.
For example, in his “preanalytic” writings on hysteri