The Mark of Cain: Psychoanalytic Insight and the Psychopath

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J. REID MELOY, ED.: The Mark of Cain: Psychoanalytic Insight and the Psychopath. Hillsdale, NJ: The Analytic Press, 2001, 368 pp., $55.00, ISBN 0-88163-310-0. This book needed to be published. In attempting to understand psychopathy, one cannot help but study psychoanalytic insights on the topic. Yet, modern research and texts tend to go in other directions. Moreover, even light reading within psychoanalytic concepts on the topic quickly brings the realization that some of the best concepts have been unduly brushed aside by newer ideas and the flow of time. In The Mark of Cain, Meloy, a well-known expert on the topic, attempts to provide a sweeping collection of psychoanalytic knowledge on psychopathy in one volume. Moreover, Meloy links the psychoanalytic knowledge to newer biological and developmental insights, and tries to summarize the contributions of the psychoanalysts in the context of what we have learned since. In large measure, Meloy succeeds in this daunting task. The book includes seminal contributions by Phyllis Greenacre, John Bowlby, Helene Deutsch, Wilhelm Reich, and August Aichhorn. D.W. Winnicott's and Otto Kernberg's writings also appear, although the selections chosen are not quite as illuminating as other work by these authors. The idea of illumination came to mind frequently in reading this book. I fear that Meloy chose a bit too much based on historical significance rather than illuminative value. The paper or chapter that introduces a pivotal concept is always important, but such writing is not always as powerful as later works that may use well-known concepts but bring them to fuller expression. Of course, Meloy could be criticized had he chosen only the most insightful writings and skipped some of the historical pieces. I certainly am not saying that the selections are boring. Almost all contain wisdom that is often forgotten in current treatises on psychopathy. As an example, I thought myself controversial when I discovered while in training that some psychopaths had neurotic traits, that some were ambivalent about their brazen behavior rather than guiltless as usually assumed. I've known for some time that the psychoanalysts had made my discovery decades before me, but Meloy's book offers several viewpoints on the reasons and limits of this ambivalence. Obviously, then, although I quibble with Meloy a bit about his selection, his book is nonetheless quite illuminating. Although it is well-known, I had not previously read Milton H. Miller's Time and the Character Disorder. This piece is a powerful reminder of the poetic character of some of the best of psychoanalytic writing. …