People of the lie

Erich Fromm was acutely sensitive to this fact when he broadened the definition of necrophilia to include 

the desire of certain people to control others -to make them controllable, to foster their dependency, 

to discourage their capacity to think for themselves, to diminish their unpredictability and originality, to keep 

them in line, 

Evil, then, for the moment, is that force, residing either inside or outside of human beings, that seeks to kill life

or liveliness. And goodness is its opposite.. Goodness is that which promotes life and liveliness, 

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Actually, the lie is designed not so much to deceive others as to deceive themselves. They cannot or will not tolerate the pain of self-reproach. 

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Nonetheless, a leading theory of the genesis of pathological narcissism is that it is a defensive phenomenon. 

Since almost all young children demonstrate a formidable array of narcissistic characteristics, it is assumed 

that narcissism is something we generally "grow out of" in the course of normal development, through a stable childhood, under the care of loving and understanding parents. If the parents are cruel and unloving, however, or the childhood otherwise traumatic, it it believed that the infantile narcissism will be preserved as a kind of 

psychological fortress  to protect the child against the vicissitudes of its intolerable life. 

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Fromm saw the genesis of human evil as a development process : we are not created evil or forced to be evil, 

but we become evil slowly over time through a long series of choices. 

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The pretense of the evil is designed at least as much to deceive themselves as others. 

Any experienced psychotherapist knows that unloving parents abound, and that the vast majority of such 

parents maintain at least some degree of a loving pretense. 

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The most typical victim of evil is a child. This is to be expected, because children are not only the weakest 

and most vulnerable members of our society but also because parents wield a power over the lives of their 

children that is essentially absolute. 

The dominion of master over slave is not far different from the dominion of parent over child. The child's 

immaturity and resulting dependency mandate its parents' possession of great power but do not negate

the fact that this power, like all power, is subject to abuse of various degrees of malignancy. 

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Evil was defined as the use of power to destroy the spiritual growth of others for the purpose of defending and 

preserving the integrity of our own sick selves. In short, it is scapegoating. We scapegoat not the strong but the weak. For the evil to so misuse their power, they must have the power to use in the first place. They must have 

some kind of dominion over their victims. The most common relationship of dominion is that of parent over 

child. Children are weak, defenseless, and trapped in relation to their parents. 

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The 'evil' people we have described certainly did not define themselves as ill, nor did they appear to be 

suffering. They would certainly not have identified themselves as patients. Indeed, as I have said, it is 

characteristic, of the evil that, in their narcissism, they believe that there is nothing wrong with them, 

that they are psychologically perfect human specimens.  

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Finally, who is to say what the evil suffer? It is consistently true that the evil do not appear to suffer deeply.

Because they cannot admit to weakness or imperfection in themselves, they must appear this way. They 

must appear to themselves to be continually on top of things, continually in command. Their narcissism 

demands it. Yet we know they are not truly on top of things. No matter how competent the parents described 

thought themselves, we know that in fact they were incompetent in their parental role. Their appearance of 

competent was just that : an appearance. A pretense. Rather than being in command of themselves, it was 

their narcissism that was in command, always demanding, whipping them into maintaining their pretense of

health and wholeness. 

Think of the psychic energy required for the continued maintenance of the pretense so characteristic of the evil!They perhaps direct at least as much energy into their devious rationalizations and destructive compensations 

as the healthiest do into loving behavior. Why? What possess them, drives them? Basically, it it fear. 

They are terrified that the pretense will break down and they will be exposed to the world and to themselves.

They are continually frightened that they will come face-to-face with their own evil. Of all emotions, fear is 

the most painful. Regardless of how well they attempt to appear calm and collected in their daily dealings, 

the evil live their lives in fear. It is a terror -and a suffering- so chronic, so interwoven into the fabric if their 

being, that they may not even feel it as such. And if they could, their omnipresent narcissism will prohibit them

from ever acknowledging it. Even if we cannot pity the evil for their inevitably ghastly old age or for the state 

of their souls after death, we can surely pity them for the lives they live of almost unremitting apprehension.    

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As we can see, then, that their narcissism makes the evil dangerous not only because it motivates them to 

scapegoat others but also because it deprives them of the restraint that results from empathy and respect 

for others. In addition to the fact that the evil need victims to sacrifice to their narcissism, their narcissism 

permits them to ignore the humanity of their victims as well.