“That conclusion was more frightening to him than if he had found some common psychiatric disorder among them, because in placing all of these men within a broad normal range, that meant to Kelly that, number one, the ability of psychiatry to assess and treat people like this was limited. And secondly, that there were likely a lot more people like that out there in the world.”
Science History Podcast · Ideas & Essays · October 2026
El-Hai is describing the Nuremberg psychiatrist Douglas Kelly, who examined the Nazi defendants and concluded they were sane, ambitious men rather than mentally ill. Kelly came home warning that the same traits were common and that authoritarianism could take root anywhere.
Transcript
…things. And speaking for myself, I have become persuaded by Dr. Kelly's interpretations, not just of the testing, but he interviewed these men over many, many hours. And that was a part of his evaluation as well. So all of what Kelly did has persuaded me to a position very close to Kelly's own.
…find some kind of specific mental illness among these war criminals. And you said earlier that he did not, that there wasn't any kind of generalizable mental illness. And he concluded that they were sane and ambitious men who had done these crimes. So what lessons did he draw from that conclusion?
That conclusion was more frightening to him than if he had found some common psychiatric disorder among them, because in placing all of these men within a broad normal range, that meant to Kelly that, number one, the ability of psychiatry to assess and treat people like this was limited. And secondly, that there were likely a lot more people like that out there in the world. And Kelly concluded that the percentage of people who share some of these qualities, some of the ones you named, the opportunism and workaholism and lack of remorse and deep self-interest, that it's a significant share of people among us now and always who are like that. And when Kelly returned to the U.S., the trial was in the middle of its sessions when he came back. He came to see the U.S.…
So in that light, as he was thinking about what he had learned about the psychology of evil, that basically evil could arise anywhere, he was worried about it arising, as you mentioned, even in the United States. What did he come to learn about the development of the psychology of evil? Was there…
In the remaining 12 years of Kelly's life after he returned from Nuremberg, he turned to a completely different field for answers like that. And that was the field of criminology, a social science. And while he remained active as a psychiatrist, he began doing things like consulting as a…
And that was cyanide, right?