“COWEN: And where does it come from, the hostility toward extreme altruists? Is it people feeling envy or that they don’t measure up?

MACFARQUHAR: I think it comes from many, many sources, and I tried to unravel some of them in the book. I think it comes from a sense that is trickled down from many academic disciplines, that humans are fundamentally egotistical, and therefore, insofar as they are not, it must be some kind of pathology or perversion. Psychoanalysis is especially suspicious in that regard.”