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Prometheus Books
August 2009
On Sale: July 28, 2009
430 pages
ISBN: 1591027268
EAN: 9781591027263
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction
The crimes of Charles Manson, Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer,
John Wayne Gacy, Dennis Rader, and other high-profile
killers are so breathtakingly awful that most people would
not hesitate to label them 'evil'. In this ground-breaking
book, renowned psychiatrist Michael H Stone - host of
Discovery Channel's former series "Most Evil" - uses this
common emotional reaction to horrifying acts as his starting
point to explore the concept and reality of evil from a new
perspective. In an in-depth discussion of the personality
traits and behaviour that constitute evil across a wide
spectrum, Dr Stone takes a clarifying scientific approach to
a topic that for centuries has been inadequately explained
by religious doctrines. Basing his analysis on the detailed
biographies of over 600 violent criminals, Stone has created
a 22-level hierarchy of evil behaviour, which loosely
reflects the structure of Dante's Inferno. He traces two
salient personality traits that run the gamut from those who
commit crimes of passion to perpetrators of the worst crimes
- sadistic torture and murder. One trait is narcissism, as
exhibited in people who are so self-centred that they have
little or no ability to care about their victims. The other
is aggression, the use of power over another person to
inflict humiliation, suffering, and death. Stone then turns
to the various factors that, singly or intertwined,
contribute to pushing certain people over the edge into
committing heinous crimes. They include heredity, adverse
environments, violence-prone cultures, mental illness or
brain injury, and abuse of mind-altering drugs. All are
considered in the search for the root causes of evil
behaviour. What do psychology, psychiatry, and neuroscience
tell us about the minds of those whose actions could be
described as evil? And what will that mean for the rest of
us? Stone discusses how an increased understanding of the
causes of evil will affect the justice system. He predicts a
day when certain persons can safely be declared salvageable
and restored to society and when early signs of violence in
children may be corrected before potentially dangerous
patterns become entrenched.
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