Abstract
This chapter explores the difficult issue of how to understand and meet the very particular nature of the destructiveness of the psychopathic child. Psychoanalysts and psychiatrists have described the lack of conscience in psychopaths, the lack of guilt and remorse for their deeds, their indifference to their victims’ cries for mercy. Hyatt Williams has pointed out that if one worked very carefully with murderers with an adequate theory of splitting, displacement and projection, it was possible to discover that they were not without conscience: they did have a conscience but only in regard to particular split-off objects. Premature interpretations regarding hidden vulnerability or dependence, which the patient has not yet owned, may produce dangerous eruptions, or, at the very least, earn the patient’s appropriate contempt. It is important, instead, to save his dignity and respect his courage in going on in the face of the dead world he inhabits.
Published Version
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