Understanding Evil

A Psychotherapist’s Guide

Lionel Corbett

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9780815392286
• eBook ISBN: 9781351199650
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Mental Health in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Evil is a ubiquitous, persistent problem that causes enormous human suffering. Although human beings have struggled with evil since the dawn of our species, we seem to be no nearer to ending it. In this book, Lionel Corbett describes the complexity of the problem of evil, as well as many of our current approaches to understanding it, in ways that are helpful to the practicing psychotherapist, psychoanalyst, or Jungian analyst.

Psychotherapists often work with people who have been the victim of evil, and, occasionally, the therapist is faced with a perpetrator of evil. To be helpful in these situations, the practitioner must understand the problem from several points of view, since evil is so complex that no single approach is adequate. Understanding Evil: A psychotherapist's guide describes a range of approaches to evil based on Jungian theory, psychoanalysis, social sciences, philosophy, neurobiology, mythology, and religious studies. The book clarifies the difference between actions that are merely wrong from those that are truly evil, discusses the problem of detecting evil, and describes the effects on the clinician of witnessing evil. The book also discusses what is known about the psychology of terrorism, and the question of whether a spiritual approach to evil is necessary, or whether evil can be approached from a purely secular point of view.

In Understanding Evil, a combination of psychoanalytic and Jungian theory allows the practitioner a deep understanding of the problem of evil. The book will appeal to analytical psychologists and psychotherapists, psychoanalysts, and academics and students of Jungian and post-Jungian studies. It will also be of great interest to researchers approaching the question of evil from a variety of other fields, including philosophy and religious studies.

Chapter 1

What is evil?

The problem of evil

The problem of evil is one of humanity’s most long-standing and controversial preoccupations, claiming the attention of many disciplines ever since the beginning of human thought. Evil is an inescapable part of our world, to the extent that some people believe that a proclivity towards evil is an intrinsic aspect of human nature. I do not need to rehearse the long list of evils to which we are exposed; suffice it to say that the scale of human evil, and the enormous suffering it causes, demands that we try to understand and confront it. Although evil behavior often seems to make no sense, we cannot afford to dismiss it as ultimately inscrutable, because doing so would make it more difficult to deal with. Perhaps the attempt to make evil more intelligible is a way to manage our fear of it, and certainly we hope that the better we understand it, the better we will be able to deal with it. At the same time, it is unlikely that there can be a single, overarching theory about the nature of evil, given its variety of forms and contexts and the absence of a unifying quality common to all of them. Similarly, if we try to define evil too precisely, we then seem to exclude other types of evil.

Because evil has long preoccupied philosophers, psychologists, and our spiritual traditions, much has already been said about it, mostly from a conscious position. My task is twofold: (1) to see what can be added from the point of view of depth psychology, and (2) to describe the relevance of this problem to the psychotherapist. I think it is crucial for psychotherapists to understand this issue, since so much evil behavior depends on the psychological processes of the perpetrator. Psychotherapists often work with the victims of evil, and there are times when a psychotherapist is able to help perpetrators of evil such as child abusers. With such hurtful people, the gradual development of empathy during psychotherapy may attenuate their destructive behavior.

An important aspect of this problem is the issue of whether all human beings have the capacity for evil, in which case we have to ask why some of us are better at restraining it than others, or whether there is something special about the paradigmatic instances of evil such as Hitler or Pol Pot. My assumption here is that at least some of what we describe as moral evil is motivated by unconscious factors, by complexes in Jung’s sense, and by characterological problems such as untrammeled narcissism. These have developmental sources that are fairly well understood.

In the long-standing debate about whether evil is comprehensible or an ultimate mystery, most psychologists (and many philosophers) lean toward the former position. At the same time, we must acknowledge that we may only be able to understand some instances of evil rather than evil as a whole. No single discipline can provide a complete answer to the problem of evil. As Levine (2000, p. 273) says: “Looking for a single cause of evil is like looking for a single meaning of life. It is a sure sign that one is in the grip of a theory and reveals the extent to which theory informs observation.”

Psychologists might be able to understand the motivations that drive evil behavior, but understanding the nature of evil itself is a difficult conceptual problem – if indeed there is such an essence, a claim that is often denied. Some writers believe that the word evil is inherently demonizing and adds nothing to our understanding, so that it would be better to use specific descriptions such as “unnecessary, gratuitous cruelty to others.” But if we do not use the word evil, then we risk not conveying or even minimizing the gravity of the phenomena we are describing. We can therefore at least use the term evil descriptively, as an adjective rather than a noun, without necessarily implying that evil has an independent ontological reality. However, people who believe that metaphysical evil exists do insist on the objective reality of evil. Some religious writers believe that the divine itself has a dark side, and Jung believed that our image of God must include a dark aspect, since evil cannot be attributed to humanity alone. In contrast, people with a secular worldview want to get rid of the notion of some hidden spiritual force causing evil. Instead, they prefer to understand evil exclusively in terms of psychology and social science, as a disorder, as some kind of aberration, or as the result of historical and political forces. For them, the word evil implies too much of a moral absolute, and the notion of evil is seen as an obsolete hangover from simplistic religious thinking. Calder (2013) points out that the word evil is ambiguous because although it may be taken to imply a metaphysical agent such as Satan, it is not always clear if this commitment is intended, but it is possible to use the word evil without any metaphysical implications. It is also possible to use this word as a way of saying we cannot understand how someone could carry out certain ghastly behavior. Mearns and Thorne (2000) suggest that evil is “a hypothetical construct used to describe someone whom we fear and whom we do not understand. Once our fear diminishes or our understanding increases, the person is no longer evil” (p. 59).

Should we use the term evil?

Is evil a metaphysical reality with an essence of its own, or is it entirely explicable in terms of human psychology and social factors? If evil has a supernatural origin, in the last analysis human beings could not fully understand it, and we could not deal with it without supernatural help. In contrast, if evil is purely a matter of social or individual pathology, then we may not need the word evil at all. Secular thinkers particularly want to get rid of the notion of the devil or of some hidden spiritual force causing evil. Many of these writers believe we should not use the term evil because of its occult references, thereby reducing human responsibility (Masters, 1997). Thus, for Svendsen (2010), theology is irrelevant to our understanding of the problems with which evil presents us; evil is purely a human moral problem. He believes that evil is not primarily a subject for theology, philosophy, or science, but a problem that must be addressed in the political arena. He thinks that the difficulty we have understanding evil makes us reach for mythological explanations of it, such as the devil, but if we attribute evil to the devil, then we make it appear external to us. At the same time, he also realizes that to see evil as only attributable to human beings risks making it seem normal, as if we can thereby justify and accept evil. Svendsen notes that an essential characteristic of evil is that it is “terribly sad” (p. 12).

Knoll (2008), a forensic psychiatrist, argues that evil cannot be defined scientifically because it is an illusory moral concept that does not exist in nature. Levine (2000) argues that psychologists, judges, and journalists should avoid the term evil because it has unavoidable historical connotations of sin, disobeying God, redemption, salvation, original sin, and so on. These metaphysical implications are embedded in a particular worldview, and for Levine they are irrelevant to disciplines such as law and psychology. For him, because the word evil has roots in a religious attitude, the problem of evil is “extra-scientific” (p. 267). Levine believes we cannot naturalize the word evil, meaning use a religious term in a secular context. When we do not use the term in its religious sense, we are referring to seriously immoral acts, or we accuse a person of being heinous or repugnant, but we can refer to a person as a psychopath without using the term evil. Levine therefore believes that the idea of evil is anachronistic in terms of contemporary legal and psychological discourse. Thus, some mental illness gives rise to evil, but if we say that evil behavior has its roots in abnormal brain functioning or damaging life experiences, then we can describe it in these terms, and we do not need the category of evil. Religious views have little in common with the views of psychology; religions give qualitatively different accounts of evil than do scientific accounts. Levine therefore believes that to ask “why is there evil?” as distinct from the question of how to relieve suffering or prevent some types of action is not a psychological question. The contrary view is that some acts are so awful that no other word conveys the horror or revulsion they inspire in us. For example, Alford (1997) believes we need a word that takes us beyond terms like very bad or destructive. He agrees, however, that “evil is not a psychological category but a metaphysical one, about why men and women suffer so much” (p. 20).

Whether or not we should retain the word evil, it is clear that this term is sometimes bandied about too readily, without trying to understand the offending individual. The political use of the word evil is a good example of the problem of overuse. Comments such as President Reagan’s “evil empire,”¹ President Bush’s “axis of evil,”² and the Iranian description of the USA as the “Great Satan” are all examples of the word being used to express fear, anger, or intense dislike. This usage results from splitting and projection, as if “we” are all good and “they” are entirely demonic. Calling others evil may be a way to imply that we are entitled to attack them. It is typical for adversarial nations to see each other as evil, but Cole (2006) points out that calling those we don’t like evil “obstructs our understanding, blocks our way, brings us to a halt” (p. 236). The word evil might also be used to imply a questionable notion such as the idea that some people are inherently criminal or inhuman, and so not deserving of humane treatment. The Bush administration was able to mistreat captured terrorists by repeatedly referring to them as evildoers, and this appellation probably contributed to the Abu Ghraib incident (see p. 76, note 6). Thus, as Cole put it, “the attribution of evildoing may lead to further wrongdoing” (p. 178). That is, in the process of trying to deal with what is perceived as evil, more evil may be done, which may be why Jesus spoke against resisting evil (Matthew 5:39).

Many social scientists and postmodern writers see notions of good and evil as entirely socially constructed, and many see good and evil as existing on a continuum. These authors often see deviant behavior purely in terms of the situation that evokes it, without attributing reasons for the behavior to the psychology of the perpetrator. They point out that unacceptable behavior is a function of a given society’s values and its historical period, so there is not necessarily anything substantively or essentially identifiable as evil. Other people feel that serious evil cannot be described using neutral language such as “deviant” without trivializing evil behavior. Thus, Delbanico (1996) complains that our society has lost touch with the idea of evil, and affluent Western societies deny the reality of evil, even though it is an inescapable reality. He believes that our postmodern reluctance to name evil puts us in danger of being dominated by it. With this warning in mind, we may note a variety of ways to define evil.

Recognizing and defining evil

Traditionally, evil has been spoken of in two different ways; moral evil refers to acts such as murder, whereas volcanoes and earthquakes are regarded as natural evils. However, the line between these types of evil becomes blurred when natural disasters such as severe storms are the result of human behavior leading to global warming. This distinction raises the question of whether evil is a principle of nature, a natural or archetypal given, or whether evil is a purely human concept, in which case what we call natural evil is simply any process of nature that causes human suffering. Most people feel that evil that is planned and deliberate is the worst kind; if bad things happen by accident, they are tragic but not evil. The magnitude of the act is important; the greater the suffering and loss caused to victims, the more likely the act is considered to be evil.

Part of the difficulty here is that there is a form of moral evil that claims to be good; it follows normative social rules, as we saw in the case of people who sincerely believed in a regime such as the Nazis. Susan Smith, who killed her children by drowning them in a lake, left a handwritten confession in which she said that her children “deserve to have the best,” apparently meaning that they would go to heaven, which would be better for them than being on earth. Did she actually believe she was doing something good? Perhaps Hitler thought that what he was doing was good for Germany, but then on what grounds do the rest of us consider this kind of behavior to be evil?

A commonsense approach to the recognition of evil would include whatever produces human sorrow, whatever inflicts undeserved harm onto people, or whatever leads to unnecessary destruction or senseless violence. More broadly, we recognize as evil anything that curtails personal growth and human potential, or whatever is destructive of human relationships. Becker (1975) believes that we identify as evil anything that threatens the perpetuation of our species, just as Pierrakos (1990) thinks of evil as anything that is anti-life. Singer (2004) believes that “evil acts are acts that are horrendously wrong, that cause immense suffering, and are done from an evil motive – the motive to do something horrendously wrong” (p. 193). Magid (1988) thinks of evil as a pattern of behavior that disregards the whole in which we are embedded, for example using pesticides with no thought for their environmental consequences. Katz (1993) defines evil as “behavior ranging from deliberate destruction of human dignity to deliberate destruction of human life” (p. 10). He believes that depriving a person of dignity is a “critical starting point in the genesis of evil” (p. 146). Hering (1996) says that evil is unmitigated destructiveness that is absolute, a state of mind devoid of any care, concern, guilt, scruple, or empathy for the victim. As Benn (1985) points out, however, it is not enough to talk about evil behavior; one could be evil but unable to act. Similarly, Calder (2003) notes that an evil character could be too cowardly or incompetent to succeed in committing an evil act. He also notes that ordinary people without an evil character may cause evil. (This question is discussed further on p. 45).

Some authors see evil on a spectrum of behavior of increasing degrees of gravity. Singer (2004) describes six degrees or gradations of evil. At the extreme, the perpetrator does something knowing it is evil and because it is evil, which Singer refers to as pure or malignant evil. Next, the individual does something knowing it is evil but without caring, which Singer refers to as ruthless evil. Then, an individual might carry out an evil act that he would judge to be evil if it were to be inflicted on himself or on people he cares about, but not if it is inflicted on others or if he inflicts it; this is fanatical evil, exemplified by terrorist groups. One might cause evil for reasons such as convenience, which Singer terms egoistic evil. He believes that it is not evil to act harmfully for some greater good or when one mistakenly judges the action to be good. Singer acknowledges the difficulty of discerning or proving which degree of evil is applicable to a given case.

Svendsen (2010) also distinguishes various forms of evil. Instrumental evil occurs in the process of carrying out another purpose, such as the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, or a person may knowingly and intentionally commit harm in the process of satisfying needs. What he refers to as stupid evil is based on human incompetence without an evil motive, such as driver error leading to an injury. Svendsen uses the term demonic evil to describe evil carried out for its own sake, in order to deliberately harm others or to watch them suffer.³ James (1958) believes there are at least two forms of evil; one is the result of a maladjustment to the environment, which is curable either by modifying the self or the environment, while the other is “a wrongness or vice” in the person’s essential nature (p. 117). In more modern terms, James might be distinguishing between developmental and situational factors in contrast to an innate aspect of the personality. But if a person is in serious emotional pain resulting from developmental failures in childhood, is he truly evil if his behavior hurts others, or should we think of this situation more in terms of tragedy?

We instinctively feel that it is evil to use another person purely for one’s own benefit, or to kill for pleasure, or to use force to humiliate and destroy others. It is evil to rejoice in injustice and to enjoy humiliating others. It is evil to destroy just for the sake of exercising power. We regard it as evil to try to harm others when motivated by hatred, envy, greed, financial gain, revenge, and similar motives. There may even be a form of evil that is entirely unmotivated, that has no explanation; once it begins, it seems to be self-perpetuating.

It is important to note that evil is not only the result of problematic individual traits such as sadism and indifference to the suffering of others; religious traditions also produce evil at times. Medieval Crusaders believed they were waging a holy war against the Muslims while pillaging and murdering on the way to Jerusalem. The medieval Inquisitors sincerely believed they were combating heresy, which justified their violence. The pursuit of religious ideals often leads to evil, as we saw in the case of people such as Osama bin Laden. Kekes (2005) believes that this latter kind of evil arises from distortion and falsification of the relevant facts by the individual’s passions, for example when harmless disagreements between religions lead to non-believers being seen as enemies of the truth who must be destroyed, or when political differences are seen as symptoms of immorality. The depth psychologist tries to take into account the unconscious underpinnings of such passions, in order to understand the reasons that people become possessed by affectively toned ideas or complexes to the extent that cognitive distortions occur. When psychologists see toxic behavior, we look for the complex or for other unconscious mental mechanisms driving the behavior, such as self-deception (discussed on p. 61) and perceptual blindness. Conscious intention may be etiologically less important than these unconscious sources of motivation, but even ordinary states of mind such as boredom may lead to evil. Conscious traits such as ambition are healthy up to a point, but overweening ambition may rapidly become evil.

Noddings (1989) approaches evil from a woman’s point of view and tries to develop a model of ethics based on caring, relationship, and an appreciation for the importance of feelings instead of a model based on principles and rules. She suggests that evil consists not only of whatever produces pain and helplessness but also of whatever neglects relationship. Moral evil includes the failure to alleviate these problems. Noddings believes that most moral philosophy has been written unconsciously from a male point of view and that the problem of evil has been “suffused with male interests and conditioned by masculine experience” (p. 1). History, politics, and other social structures have obscured the nature of evil because all these systems for dealing with it have been created by men, and men tend to think in terms of power. World religions teach that God is all-powerful and just, but the notion of an omnipotent God allows men to avoid their own responsibility. In contrast to theodicies⁴ devised by men, Noddings does not believe that there can be any redemptive explanation for the existence of evil. She believes that women are better than men at dealing with ambiguity, and so they are better able to deal with evil in themselves and better able to work out the problem of evil in relationships.

Noddings believes human beings have a natural disposition to care, and when we fail to be present to others’ needs, we easily succumb to the kind of striving that promotes evil. She believes that the incessant desire to have more for oneself in relation to others is a particularly male desire that most women find inexplicable, and this desire contradicts the project of being a mother.

Noddings does not provide many descriptions of evil in women, except to say that they may succumb to the evil of men by agreeing to sacrifice their sons in war, or they may care in the wrong way, for example by being too smothering as mothers. She ignores the fact that women may have their own d...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• 1 What is evil?
• 2 Can we understand evil?
• 3 The approach of social science to evil
• 4 Psychoanalytic approaches to evil
• 5 Jung and Jungians on evil
• 6 Biological factors that predispose to evil
• 7 Religious, mythological, and philosophical views of evil
• 8 Psychological aspects of religious fundamentalism and terrorism
• 9 Is evil part of human nature?
• References
• Index