I would tend to agree with the author of the article on this one, with the exception that the mistreatment of a child can be affected and exacerbated by genetic predispositions. I had three brothers. There was something quite wrong with our mother. But this was a very long time ago, before P's & T's figured out how to deal with problems created before the age of three. (Freud apparently said, before the age of 6, forget it.) I am no professional, so all I can say is that mom really didn't like being close to other people, being intimate with other people. And that definitely included babies and toddlers. This created huge problems for me and my brothers, but only my brother Peter turned into a psychopath. He was drug addicted most of his life. Never held a job in his life. Spent much time in mental hospitals. Died at 47. These were things that none of the rest of us did. After many decades of reading and thinking, I believe that the other three of us reacted "normally" to the deprivation of maternal love and care, in other words, we were really screwed up but didn't go out to "get" other people. Peter was a different fish from day 1. And he perhaps had a genetic propensity. He was evil, if anyone was. He was evil to us, he was evil to others. He enjoyed and lusted for the creation of pain in others. Imagine growing up with someone like that! Yuk! And yes, my parents knew SOMETHING was wrong and took Peter to the leading shrinks of the day, who were all Freudian party members and had no idea what happens to kids who are mistreated as infants and toddlers. My mother, a vastly intelligent and educated and cultured woman, was also a consummate actress, so suspicion never fell on her. Child abuse can be very, very invisible on the outside. No one ever laid a hand on us. If a mother doesn't develop enough intersubjectivity or attunement with her child, if she doesn't hold it and cuddle it enough, if she doesn't make the baby feel wanted and loved so that the baby's self-regard develops normally, you wind up with people like me and like a lot of us, who spend 50 years in therapy (me) and try an awful lot of psychoactive drugs, most of which don't work. It's really a downer, and that's why I'm here, constant s*****e thoughts.

So. Where does evil come from. A combination of the "usual suspects": genetics, early childhood, later childhood environment. We haven't yet got to the point where we can separate out the percentage due to each, but come back in a hundred years and I'm sure there'll be interesting developments.