The Mark of Cain makes available for the first time the
accumulated psychoanalytic understanding of the psychopathic mind.
Editor Reid Meloy, a leading authority on the psychology of the
psychopath, has brought together in a single collection the most
historically important psychoanalytic papers on the psychopath and
delineted their continuing relevance to contemporary
understanding.
According to Meloy, two theoretical traditions flow into the
psychoanalytic understanding of psychopathy. The first tributary
focuses on the early development of the psychopath in order to
illuminate how a profound alteration in self-regard leads both to a
denigration of the other and to an impulsive search for
gratification in the present. The second tributary seeks to locate
the psychopathic miscarriage of human potentiality within analytic
theories of personality structure and clinically grounded
differential diagnosis. Meloy presents the major contributions
associated with both of these traditions. Included within this body
of literature are the original formulations of concepts that have
long since become part of the psychoanalytic nomenclature: the
"affectionless" juvenile offender, the diagnostic significance of
"affect hunger," the behavioral consequences of "superego lacunae,"
the recourse to promiscuous identification in "the impostor," and
the paradoxically lethal lure of "malignant narcissism." Of special
interest are Meloy's historical notes to each chapter and two
section introductions, the latter major essays in their own
right.
The explosion of empirical research on psychopathy over the past
two decades masks the fact that much contemporary work in this area
is grounded in the clinical formulations of leading psychoanalysts
of the twentieth century. The Mark of Cain rescues this intimate
understanding of the inner world of the psychopath and thereby
contributes to clinical realism in the face of deception,
manipulation, exploitation, and even frank dangerousness.
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