May 11
Convocation: Joel Dimsdale ’68
Joel Dimsdale ’68, a distinguished professor emeritus and research professor in the department of psychiatry at the University of California, San Diego, is the author of Anatomy of Malice: The Enigma of the Nazi War Criminal. This gripping narrative probes the psychological nature of four Nazi leaders who instigated brutal mass killings. Psychiatrists and psychologists methodically interviewed and tested the Nuremberg war criminals in 1945, but their findings were hidden away and mired in controversy for decades.
Drawing on his decades of experience as a psychiatrist and the dramatic advances within psychiatry, psychology, and neuroscience, Dimsdale engages in a complex and troubling quest to make sense of the most extreme evil. Are evildoers monstrous psychopaths, or is the capacity for wickedness inherent in every human being? What is it in the human psyche that gives rise to hatred and murderous rage?
There is an eerie parallel between what was revealed in 1945 and what we confront today. What is malice? How can we understand the psychology of evil in today’s mass killers?