The book is the “result of 10 years of research into the psychology of genocide and the Holocaust, the psychology of war, of terrorism, obedience, and the many other ways in which human beings behave aggressively and often cruelly toward other people, toward other species, and often even toward themselves,” says Steven James Bartlett ’65, author of The Pathology of Man: A Study of Human Evil (Charles C. Thomas Publisher, 2005, $53.95). The book applies the science of pathology to the human species and identifies and describes the pathologies that afflict our species. Bartlett says he aims to provide a solid foundation of scholarship encompassing the work of 20th century psychologists, psychiatrists, ethologists, psychologically focused historians, and others who have studied human aggression and destructiveness.
Bartlett is the author of eight other books and monographs and many papers in the fields of psychology, philosophy of science, and problem solving. He has served as professor at Saint Louis University and the University of Florida, and as research fellow at the Max-Planck-Institute in Starnberg, Germany, and as fellow at the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions.