Reproduction of Evil

• An Introduction to Malignant Dissociative Contagion. Loneliness and the Allure of Bodily Cruelty. Child Abuse and the Problem of Knowing History. The Paradox of Innocence: Dissociative States in Perpetrators of Bodily Violation. Malignance and the Bestiality of Survival. The Depravities of the Nonhuman Self: Greed, Murder, Persecution.  Frankenstein and His Monster: Grief and the Escape from Grief. The Problem of Redemption: From Homicide to Psychic Annihilation.

"Drawing on her own clinical experiences and the work of others, Sue Grand challenges us to take on the perilous task of identifying individuals dedicated to malice and killing, and to try to work with them on the murderous core of their personality through psychoanalytic psychotherapy. Among the many merits of her book are her rich clinical and historical portraits of those individuals at risk for a life of 'malignant dissociative disorder' and her clarification of the role of confrontation in their treatment. It is essential, Grand holds, for these patients to take responsibility for their hateful forms of destructiveness. It is the therapist's challenge, on the other hand, to bear the pain with the patient, to resist the temptation of revenge, and thereby to provide a therapeutic medium for the process of self-healing. In a century in which the Holocaust was at first glance easier to comprehen because it was preceded by the long-standing Nazi habit of declaring victims to be 'enemy aliens,' it behooves us to study the phenomena of human destructiveness. The Reproduction of Evil is essential to such study."- Henry Krystal, M.D., Author, Integration and Self Healing (Analytic Press, 1993)"The Reproduction of Evil is a moving book written by a therapist who is also a philosopher and a poet. When Sue Grand presents her clinical findings, we hear more than cases; we meet people who, in spite of deep disturbances, are uniquely alive. Grand's book is an important addition to the literature on massive social evil, a phenomenon that has been the hallmark of the century behind us."- Martin S. Bergmann, Ph.D., Clinical Professor of Psychology, NYU"Sue Grand offers us a fascinating, profound, and wide-ranging reflection on trauma, abuse, and dissociation. As she weaves her remarkable narrative, she is able to unify the concrete reality of pain and violence with the best of what psychoanalytic theory has to offer. Her ethical clarity, her depth of observation, her elegant writing, and the courageousness of her clinical stance place her among the few psychoanalysts who truly inspire us to consider afresh the furthest reaches and darkest edges of our field."- Jessica Benjamin, Ph.D., Author, Shadow of the Other