J. Reid Meloy

Origins * Introduction * Dynamic and Biologic Origins * Developmental Origins. Structure and Dynamics * Affective Life and Death * Unconscious Defense and Conscious Choice. Violence, Psychosis, and Related States * Modes of Aggression * Psychosis and Psychopathy. Treatment * Psychotherapeutic Issues. Appendix 1: Jonathan Guard -- Deception and Denial in Psychopathy. Appendix 2: Louis Cypher -- Paranoid Schizophrenia and Psychopathy. Appendix 3: The Rorschach Psychodiagnosis of Psychopathy.

Origins, Dynamics, and Treatment

The Psychopathic Mind

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.

Psychoanalytic Insight and the Psychopath

The Mark of Cain

Jens Hoffmann

Lorraine Sheridan

Public figures require attention, whether from a constituency who votes them in or out of office, shareholders who decide their economic benefit to the corporation, or fans who judge their performances. However, on the periphery of this normal attention resides a very real risk; that of a much smaller group of individuals who lack the ability to discriminate between their own private fantasies and the figure's public behavior. They may be personally insulted by perceived betrayal, fanatically in love due to a perceived affectionate or sexual invitation, or simply preoccupied with the daily life of the public figure. Such individuals may fixate and do nothing more. Others communicate or approach in a disturbing way. A few will threaten. And on rare occasions, one will breach the public figure's security perimeter and attack. Stalking, Threatening, and Attacking Public Figures is a comprehensive survey of the current knowledge about stalking, violence risk, and threat management towards public figures. With contributions from forensic psychologists and psychiatrists, clinicians, researchers, attorneys, profilers, and current and former law enforcement professionals, this book is the first of its kind, international in scope, and rich in both depth and complexity. The book is divided into three sections which, in turn, focus upon defining, explaining, and risk managing this increasingly complex global reality. Chapters include detailed case studies, analyses of quantitative data, reflections from attachment theory and psychoanalytic thought, descriptions of law enforcement and protective organization activities, mental health and psychiatric categorizations and understandings, consideration of risk assessment models and variables, victim perspectives, and others.

A Psychological and Behavioral Analysis

Stalking, Threatening, and Attacking Public Figures

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. 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.

Violent Attachments

The Psychology of Stalking is the first scholarly book on stalking ever published. Virtually every serious writer and researcher in this area of criminal psychopathology has contributed a chapter. These chapters explore stalking from social, psychiatric, psychological and behavioral perspectives. New thinking and data are presented on threats, pursuit characteristics, psychiatric diagnoses, offender-victim typologies, cyberstalking, false victimization syndrome, erotomania, stalking and domestic violence, the stalking of public figures, and many other aspects of stalking, as well as legal issues. This landmark text is of interest to both professionals and other thoughtful individuals who recognize the serious nature of this ominous social behavior. First scholarly book on stalking ever published Contributions from virtually all major researchers in field Discussion of what to do when being stalked Uses examples from recent publicized cases

Clinical and Forensic Perspectives

The Psychology of Stalking

Carl B. Gacono

This book provides a definitive empirical study of antisocial character pathology and its assessment through the use of the Rorschach. Drawing upon a decade of research with nearly 400 individuals in various hospitals and prisons, the authors paint an extraordinary intrapsychic picture of the personality structure and psychodynamics of these troublesome patients. Serving as both an educational tool and a reference text, this book presents: * Rorschach data on several different antisocial groups -- conduct disordered children and adolescents, antisocial personality disordered adult males with and without schizophrenia, antisocial adult females, and male and female sexual homicide perpetrators; * nomothetic (group) and idiographic (case study) data; * data which have been analyzed and theoretically interpreted using both structural methods and psychoanalytic approaches which represent the cutting edge of Rorschach theory and practice; and * a developmental approach in analyzing Rorschach data gathered from antisocial children, adolescents, and adults -- providing striking similarities. This is the first Rorschach database of this type that has ever been published. As such, it serves as a valuable reference text for Rorschach users -- providing a definitive empirical base, theoretical integration, and a focus on individuals who create severe problems for society.

The Rorschach Assessment of Aggressive and Psychopathic Personalities

Marvin W. Acklin

James F. Murray

Appreciation of the beauty and complexity of the human mind when perceiving an ambiguous stimulus led Dr. Hermann Rorschach to develop his scientific method eighty years ago. Full of gratitude for his brief life and work, the editors hope this volume will stand as an idiographic testament to his brilliance for the Rorschach students of the future. The contributors are clearly the most notable Rorschach clinicians in practice, and their work integrates the Comprehensive System and psychoanalytic methods. This book is organized into four sections. Within each of the first three sections -- devoted to psychotic, borderline, and neurotic disorders respectively -- the editors and invited authors have contributed Rorschach case studies which vertically cut a character pathology, personality disorder, or clinical diagnosis through a particular level of personality organization. The last section charts the enormously varied course that Rorschach work can navigate -- from the understanding of a Nobel laureate, the pain of trauma and transexuality, and the Nazi perversion of youth, to the consensus Rorschach in couple's therapy and cutting edge work in neuropsychology.

Contemporary Rorschach Interpretation

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.

"This introductory chapter sets forth three foundations for threat assessment and management: the first foundation is the defining of basic concepts, such as threat assessment and threat management; the second foundation outlines the similarities and differences between threat assessment and violence risk assessment; the third foundation is a detailed overview of the research findings, theoretical avenues, measurement instruments, and developments in practice over the past quarter century. The goal of our chapter is to introduce the professional reader to the young scientific field of threat assessment and management, and to clarify and guide the seasoned professional toward greater excellence in his or her work"--

International Handbook of Threat Assessment

Stalking, Threatening, and Attacking Public Figures is a comprehensive survey of the current knowledge about stalking, violence risk, and threat management towards public figures. With contributions from forensic psychologists, clinicians, researchers, attorneys, and current and former law enforcement professionals, this book is the first of its kind, international in scope, and rich in both depth and complexity.

International Handbook of Threat Assessment offers a definition of the foundations of threat assessment, systematically explores its fields of practice, and provides information and instruction on the best practices of threat assessment.

J. Reid Meloy

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