Dr. Gustav Gilbert was an American psychologist who, while serving as a Captain in the United States Army, was sent to work with the International Military Tribunal at the post-World War II trials of German prisoners at Nuremberg.

Upon arrival, he was appointed to serve as prison psychologist, in collaboration with a psychiatrist, Dr. Douglas Kelley, to evaluate and observe — but not to treat — the prisoners. Their work resulted in their becoming the confidants of the likes of Hermann Goering, Joachim von Ribbentrop, Rudolf Hess, and other infamous members of Hitler’s inner circle.

If anyone was acquainted with absolute evil, it would surely be Dr. Gilbert, who later defined the term thus:

“I told you once that I was searching for the nature of evil. I think I’ve come close to defining it: a lack of empathy. It’s the one characteristic that connects all the defendants. A genuine incapacity to feel with their fellow men. Evil, I think, is the absence of empathy.”

– G. M. Gilbert

I certainly would not argue with Dr. Gilbert’s conclusion; but I might presume to add this to it: that the absence of empathy may also be inextricably tied to a condition known as malignant narcissism. Besides Dr. Gilbert’s Nazi subjects, one need only think of others who have personified evil in just the last century: Joseph Stalin, Benito Mussolini, Idi Amin, Osama bin Laden . . . and others living today who are better left unnamed here.

Does this imply that all people who suffer from a lack of empathy are necessarily evil? I don’t think so . . . though they’re certainly not the most pleasant of people. But perhaps the combination of malignant narcissism and lack of empathy in an individual increases the tendency toward evil. Or are the two pathologies simply two sides of the same coin?

I’ll leave those questions to the professionals to answer. But it does make me wonder about some of those living persons I haven’t named.

You know who I mean.

Just a sayin’ . . .

Brendochka
7/30/26