This book explores how and why genocide is a trans-cultural and trans-historical phenomenon, reflects the unconscious processes that drive human nature, and draws broadly on psychoanalytic theory, and on social science and philosophical perspectives.

Using Bass’s own research on genocide and his considerable clinical psychoanalytic experience, the book examines what it is within us that leads us to see some people or groups as ‘other’, what we project on to these groups, how we can come to dehumanise them, and how mass murder can become a purportedly ethical imperative. Using real-life examples, it explores the question of what genocide says about us individually and collectively, how apparently ‘normal’ people can take part in genocide.

Tackling one of the most important topics of our time, this is key reading for all psychoanalysts and psychotherapists, and for philosophers, social scientists, and psychologists.