 My name is Sam Baknin, and I am the author of Malignancy of Love, Narcissism Revisible. The profoundly disturbing movie we need to talk about Kevin is told from the mother's point of view. Kevin is a mother-justed kid with contact disorder. He blooms into a full-fledged, blood-curdling psychopath in his teens. His mother is one of his victims. Kevin ends up killing the entire family. His mother is the sole survivor and witness to the massacre. He also goes on a rampage and eliminates or assassinates or exterminates numerous schoolmates before he is apprehended for all smiles. But the film ends with his mother now reduced to a dysfunctional shell and shadow of her former self, visiting him in prison on a regular basis, and even hugging him for good measure. Yes, it is true, some victims never learn. You hear these victims say, it is true that he is a chauvinistic narcissist or psychopath and that his behavior is unacceptable and repulsive and frightening. But all he needs is a little love, and he will be straightened out. I, the victim, will rescue him from his misery and his fortune. I will transform him. I will give him the love he lacked as a child. Then his narcissism, psychopathy, antisocial traits and behaviors will vanish, and we will all live happily ever after. I often come across set examples of the powers of self-delusion that the narcissist provokes in his victims. It is what I call malignant optimism. People simply refuse to believe that some questions are unsolvable. Some diseases cannot be cured. Some disasters are inevitable and just waiting to happen. Such people, such victims, see a sign of hope in every fluctuation. They read meaning and patterns into every random occurrence, every utterance or slip of tongue. They are deceived by their own pressing need to believe in the ultimate victory of good over evil, health over sickness, order over disorder. Life appears to them otherwise to be meaningless and just an arbitrary. The happy ending gives it all significance and restores a sense of comfort and justice. So they impose upon this indifferent universe a design, progress, aims and paths, and this is what is called magical thinking. These victims say, if only he tried harder or hard enough, he could have healed. If only he really wanted to heal. If only we found the right therapy or the right therapist. If only his defenses were down. There must be something good and worthy under the hideous facade. Or no one can be that evil and destructive. Or he didn't mean it, he must have meant it differently. Or God or higher being, the spirit, the soul are the solution, the answer to our prayers. So let us pray and things will be fine. The polyana defenses of the abused are aimed against the emerging and horrible realization and an understanding that humans are specks of dust in a totally apathetic universe. People are the playthings of evil and sadistic forces of which the narcissist and the psychopaths are mere samples. These are defenses against the unbearable realization that the pain of the victims means absolutely nothing to anyone but themselves. Nothing whatsoever. It's all in vain. The narcissist holds magical thinking and malignant optimism in barely disguised content. To him it is a sign of weakness. It gives off the scent of prey. It's a gaping vulnerability, a chink in the armor which he can explode. The narcissistic psychopath uses and abuses this human need for order, for good, for meaning. He uses and abuses all human needs, but especially this one. The liability, selective blindness, malignant optimism. These are the weapons of the beast. The abused are hard at work to provide the narcissist and the psychopath with a very arsenal that will ultimately be used against them and against them only. So Kevin's mother, in jail, having endured what she had to endure, still hugs him, still believes in him, still hopes. She is a malignant optimist.