ABSTRACT
In the autocentric mind, objects and actions are blended into a continuous world, where there is relatively little separation of the personal from the social, of the objective from the subjective, of the abstract from the concrete. When superego or ego development is lacking or faulty, other intermediaries must rise up to do the ego's work on the inward frontier of power. For example, the psychiatrist or the psychoanalyst. In normal development, the installation of the superego in males marks the phasing out of the period of oedipal conflict and rivalry with the father. For psychopaths, whose affective and superego development has been aborted, there is a clear recapitulation of the "sorcerer" theme. The psychopath is truly an empty vessel; he can feel alive only when he is causing or receiving the sharpest sensations—and there are none sharper than pain.
