Based on thirty years of clinical work with patients, Goldberg attempts to explain the psychological basis of malevolent behavior by incorporating heretofore unrecognized sources of deformed personality development into the existing body of knowledge. Approaching his subject from many perspectives - psychology, philosophy, theology, mythology, jurisprudence, and literature - he at once provides a cultural and historical overview of malevolence.

Through that prism, supported by a five-step theory, Goldberg charts the causes and development of the malevolent personality and its resistance to self-examination. He illuminates the developmental sequence of that personality through case studies of his own patients that represent a progression of stages - from a young child shamed and humiliated by caretakers to an adult who commits malevolent acts.

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Goldberg's thorough and fascinating investigation of the evolution of evil raises questions confronted in Hannah Arendt's Eichmann in Jerusalem, Erich Fromm's The Heart of Man, and Ernest Becker's Escape from Evil. Elaborating on arguments in those classics and drawing on his revealing case studies, Goldberg concludes that "evil" deeds are no more a product of mental illness than they are compelled by Satan.

People do not turn into Jeffrey Dahmers or Susan Smiths overnight, says Goldberg, but rather "learn by doing." As he writes, "Opportunities to choose between good and bad occur continually in our lives, even in the smallest matters. How we have responded to earlier choices shapes our moral (and immoral) choices now and in the future."