James Phillips Introduction For those of you not famil

20From a psychiatric perspective, after we have left behind the arena of major psychoticdisorders, we move into the more murky territory of character pathology. Indeed, all of theevaluators, staying within the bounds of DSM-IV, included a diagnosis of paranoid personalitydisorder with antisocial features. They are certainly on the right trail, but if we don’t feelconfined by the nosologic strictures of DSM-IV, we may readily shift to the character pathologydescribed as malignant narcissism. Otto Kernberg first coined this term and has offered the mostextensive descriptions of individuals with this personality style - or disorder- individuals who, inKernberg’s words, suffer from “...ego-syntonic grandiosity combined with cruelty or sadism andsevere paranoid personality traits...” (Kernberg 1984, 276). These individuals exhibit acombination of deep envy and hatred of others, combined with secret grandiosity that is at oddswith other feelings of inferiority, and finally a ruthless disregard for the rights of others togetherwith an incapacity for empathy.Such, psychiatrically speaking, is Ted Kaczynski. This leaves us with two questions:first, how do we put together the two Ted Kaczynskis, the prescient evaluator of moderntechnology and the malignant narcissist, and second, what does his case tell us about the largertheme of political extremism and psychopathology.DiscussionRegarding the first question, that of the two Kaczynskis, let us first recognize theambiguous moral valence of character pathology. This kind of psychiatric disturbance offerssome mitigation of a person’s bad behavior, but not much. But while character pathology doesn’tlet an individual off the moral hook, neither does it negate the validity of his accomplishments.Creative artists come to mind here. We long for our great artists to be nice people, but often theydon’t oblige us. Picasso wasn’t a very nice guy. But the work stands apart from the character that