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Forensic psychologist Reid Meloy identifies psychopathology as a
deviant development disturbance characterized by inordinate
instinctual aggression and the absence of a capacity bond. It is
the definitive book on the subject. A Jason Aronson Book
This book is written for psychotherapists, psychologists,
psychoanalysts, psychiatrists, and social workers in clinical or
forensic practice. Biological foci include concepts about the deep
limbic structures of the brain and the biochemistry that inhibits
or disinhibits such violence. Psychological patterns include both
psychoanalytic constructs and the specific psychological test data
from the case studies that support such constructs. Social factors
include the behavior of the victim and, in the case of
assassination, the political acts that contribute to predatory
violence. Dr. Meloy emphasizes the crucial need for mental health
professionals to go beyond descriptive diagnoses and find the
motivation and meaning of such acts. The professional's causal and
purposive formulations about such violent attachments lead to more
effective evaluation, treatment, and intervention, and perhaps
testimony in subsequent criminal and civil litigation.
In this startling and complex investigation, Dr. Meloy begins with
a simple, but profound question: why does most human violence occur
between those who are emotionally involved, or more technically,
within an attachment paradigm? He finds answers by applying
attachment theory in the tradition of Bowlby and Ainsworth, and
object relations theory in the tradition of Klein, Jacobson,
Mahler, and Kernberg, to case studies of bizarre and unusual
homicides. These idiographic portraits illustrate erotomanic
delusional disorder, chronic catathymia, the psychopath as love
object, and assassination as a form of pathological attachment. He
elucidates the ways in which certain psychodynamics that inexorably
move toward murder can only exist within a fixated or regressed
preoedipal personality structure. Such individuals are organized at
a borderline or psychotic level, and most often utilize defenses of
projection, projective identification, and omnipotent control. This
book is written for psychotherapists, psychologists,
psychoanalysts, psychiatrists, and social workers in clinical or
forensic practice. Biological foci include concepts about the deep
limbic structures of the brain and the biochemistry that inhibits
or disinhibits such violence. Psychological patterns include both
psychoanalytic constructs and the specific psychological test data
from the case studies that support such constructs. Social factors
include the behavior of the victim and, in the case of
assassination, the political acts that contribute to predatory
violence. Dr. Meloy emphasizes the crucial need for mental health
professionals to go beyond descriptive diagnoses and find the
motivation and meaning of such acts. Theprofessional's causal and
purposive formulations about such violent attachments lead to more
effective evaluation, treatment, and intervention, and perhaps
testimony in subsequent criminal and civil litigation.
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