ABSTRACT
The moral defense, self-injury where the victim takes on the badness of the perpetrator, creates a situation where “the masochist feels like a criminal, and the psychopathic sadist feels like a victim”, only replenishing the hunger that cannot be assuaged. A perpetrating female alter in a man with a dissociative identity disorder proudly said her name was Evil. Stanley Milgram conducted some memorable experiments that have been replicated many times over and have a significant and painful place in our understanding of human behavior and evil. He devised an experiment, which showed conclusively how 65% of people would obey an order which went contrary to their views on the importance of human dignity and care if a “researcher/authority figure” told them to. One of the most brilliant researchers in the field, Professor David Finkelhor, is from the USA, where in many states the legal status of corporal punishment in the school and home by adults makes for toxic outcomes.
