The work-place psychopath: he lacks compassion, empathy, remorse, and any sense of guilt. He is charming, manipulative, and sometimes very effective. Everyone knows one or has heard a story about one. Although it is a serious allegation, many people will say: “Yeah, I know…but I had a boss, I swear, he was for real…” In Denmark, a trade union organizing commercial and clerical employees has put an online test on their web-page to assist their members in figuring out if their boss is one. But what is at stake in the description of psychopathic behaviour at work? In this presentation this question will be raised by examining the phenomenon of lycanthropy found in medicine, trials, and folk lore of the middle-ages. Just as the werewolf (lit.: man-wolf) is neither man nor beast, the work-place psychopath is neither a corporate nor an authentic self – and yet somehow both the were-wolf and the psychopath paradoxically must define precisely what they cannot be.

Registration required:

No

Free:

Yes