Cruelty

Cruelty, an affective-volitional state standing in close connection with aggression (see). Biologically, the basis of cruelty consists of certain components of the drives for food and sexual drive (killing and tearing prey, violence against the object of sexual drive). In pathology, manifestations of cruelty are encountered in the most diverse forms of mental illnesses and psychopathic conditions. The classical pathological form of cruelty is sadism, a drive to inflict pain for the purpose of sexual satisfaction. To a greater or lesser degree, sadistic components are inherent in normal sexual drive (in accordance with which one can place certain manifestations of purposeless cruelty observed in everyday life: tormenting animals, children, exquisite cruelty of examiners and others), but they find their most vivid expression in cases of voluptuous tortures and murders. Elements of passion, although no longer directly connected with sexual satisfaction, are inherent in manifestations of cruelty in epileptics, epileptoid and similar antisocial psychopaths (the 'born criminals' of Lombroso, the 'enemies of society' of Kraepelin). Cruelty of a somewhat different character is found in emotionally dull subjects: in schizophrenics, schizoids, and in the cold-calculating group of antisocial psychopaths (in the 'morally feebleminded' in the exact sense of the word). These people are cruel not out of passion, but from inability to sympathize, from the absence in them of affective resonance to the experiences of others.