ABSTRACT
The topics of evil and psychopathy have long been marginalized and neglected—even dissociated—in psychoanalysis. The superego then became the moral center for the drive defense model, and deficits in psychic agency of mind were understood as the underlying dynamic for the emergence of psychopathy. Inherent, however, in the increasingly relevant and intertwined concepts of psychopathy and human evil, are extremely complex questions and issues. Ethical boundary violations and psychopathic behavior have been secreted behind the doors of the consulting rooms since the early years of psychoanalysis. And professional credentials have been used to obfuscate the commission of violations while simultaneously attempting to shift blame onto the victims. In such boundary violations, there are overlapping dynamics with psychopathy, such as problems with narcissism, omnipotence, grandiosity, superego pathology, and defensive dissociation. Like the culture at large, psychoanalysis has too often turned a blind eye to, and implicitly exonerated, its own “cute monsters.”
