I'm not sure about this, but it seems to me that of the three originating psychologists - Freud, Jung and Adler, not one of them has any real theories on the original of evil. Freud's ideas about an id, ego and superego doesnt cover the subject adequately imo. And its an odd thing to leave out too, considering that its one of the most important elements of the human psyche, along with sexuality, love, fear, desire and a sense of aesthetics. Modern science tend to ignore it as well, I suppose because it has no scientifiic explaination. It certainly doesnt make sense from an evolutionary point of view...IF you believe that all behaviour is genetically programed in a mechanistic fashion. Ideally humans would be as co-operative towards each other as ants or termites. Please prove me wrong and give me a link referencing 'modern' western psychology's ideas on the origin of evil.
Maybe it's because it wasn't always in our ancestor's gene's best interest to create an organism that was cooperative all the time. Maybe it was advantageous to the genes of the human that was cooperative within its tribe, and hostile to those outside of the tribe. Hostile to those outside the tribe, so as to not have to compete with them for territory/resources. Seems pretty consistent with human behavior overall. We're cooperative and altruistic with some (those whom we perceive to be "with us/on our side," while hostile and evil to others (outsiders). I think there's a good evolutionary explanation for evil. It makes sense to me.
Ah, but humans are far more evil AND far more altruistic than animals. Animals dont routinely wipe out vast numbers of their own species, or commit premeditated crimes against their own clan. Nor do they manifest the most extreme altruism towards others of their species far away, or even towards different species, as many humans often do, and have done for centuries.
Ah, but they would if they could, would they not? Programmed altruistic behavior in humans can misfire. For example, when a man risks his life to save another, and in the process, he dies. That would be a misfire. The original programmed behavior was intended to save somebody of his own kin, in order to preserve his genes. But it's only a generalized rule that the body knows. It can misfire. With another animals it's less likely to happen because they don't live in huge communities where they live with many other organisms that do not share their precise genes. The misfiring of the behavior ought to be expected when the body isn't inhabiting the place it's used to.
First of all one has to come to term of exactly what is meant by evil. Can you define what it is you find evil? When a man rapes a woman, this is evil in our modern society, yet in the animal kingdom this very act is natural. Man has been raping women since ancient times, women where considered property of men, or lesser then men, women usually got raped by novels and it was if no crime has been committed at all. Still to today some other cultures consider the victim the rapist other then the other way around, it's said that the woman tempted the man, thus claiming that she initiated his reaction. What you deem as evil may just very well be normal accepted behavior in another society, or past culture in ancient times. The bible for example has been the moral fiber of many Christian cultures. However today you don't find people stoning to death their wives for infidelity yet this was the accepted letter of the law in ancient times. So please first define "evil" on what context do you suppose what deems an evil act.
Well, theres a couple of twists in the defining which make it interesting. First, obviously those on the bottom end of the spectrum of good and evil will not accept the definition of those near the top...indeed the whole concept of a dynamic may be alien to them. Do psychopaths believe they are doing evil, or do they interpret their actions differently altogether? Second, virtue is sometimes manifest in fighting fire with fire. Throughout history the literature and myths of all cultures depict a violent struggle...where fighting monsters sometimes requires the knight in shining armour to become a monster! Sometimes its neccesary to cause harm as the only way of preventing harm. The wath of God in the bible is considered virtuous precisely because it is the flipside of love. God destroys because he hates evil...and in so doing occaisionally appears more like the Devil!
In this particular era there seems to be two kinds of extremes with very little middle ground. At one end are the bible thumpers whose interpretation of human life, culture and behaviour revolves around spiritualized mythologies and suspersitions. And on the other end are the scientific materialists, who regard all human life, culture and behaviour as a manifestion of a strict biological mechanicalism. Virtue, love and beauty are accidental misfirings. Man is nothing more than an electro-chemical machine programed by selfish genes which are not themselves - conscious! I believe both these extremes are false.
Carcano, Psychologists make no mention of evil because they are it. The greatest trick the devil ever played was making us think he never existed. You can include scientists in that as well.
DeepThought think deeper. Psychologists are not evil, they only identify behavior, evil doesn't exist it's just your interpretation of what you perhaps deem evil and another as a moral act. The greatest con man has ever conceived was that a superior entity must exist, and that he/the leader has direct perception of him. All others are forced then to accept his rhetoric with out question.
This is simply not true. You have not done your homework. In Jung's paradigm, one of the most important elements of the human spirit is The Shadow. Lucas tried to render it more comprehensible as "The Dark Side Of The Force," and obviously many people got at least a rudimentary grasp of the concept. But it was too vague and too simplified. The Shadow is where the parts of our spirit go that we suppress: memories, skills, desires, enthusiasm, and of course the all important je ne sais quoi. Trivial examples are easy to find. Some children have a strong yearning to be leaders. Thwart that, perhaps for the very sensible reason that they don't have the skill, and it goes into their Shadow. One day you find them bullying other children. Some people have a very strong remnant of the primitive instinct to hunt and gather. If they don't live in a rural area where they can do that, you might find them in thrift stores and garage sales, or at worst maxing out their credit cards on QVC. Jung pointed out that upon analysis every religion, prior to the metastasis of the cancer of monotheism, had exactly the same gods in its pantheon. A Warrior, a Healer, a Lover, a Reveler, etc. Even the dramatis personae of Shakespeare and the character sets on soap operas show the same paradigm. Each of those "spirits" lives inside each of us, but not at the same level of dominance. We can't always build lives that satisfy the yearnings and utilize the abilities of all of our strongest spirits. We have to find outlets for them in hobbies or other offline activities. If not, they get suppressed into our Shadow. Down there without light and air, they fester. Eventually they may begin to ooze out the cracks. If it's just in a relatively healthy explosion of anger, no major harm may be done. But if we live in a situation where even anger is suppressed... well the thing about anger is that it's the one thing that can't be suppressed. Whether our Shadow boils over because we have not given it a safety valve, or just because we have so much repression that it's uncontrollable, when it boils over we're likely to do something that breaks the rules. Buy a motorcycle, quit school, have a love affair, tell the boss to stuff it. For most of us that takes care of it... and that's bad enough, it's easy to ruin our lives that way. For other people it may be worse. Real violence. Either way, it can be seen as evil, when what it really is is a failure to manage our own spirits. Much of this can be blamed on the contemporary religions, which repress all the richness of the human spirits into a pathetic one-dimensional model of good versus evil. If you shoot raccoons in your back yard or get drunk too often, it's not because your Diana or your Bacchus is too strong and you need to find him or her a healthier outlet, perhaps as a corporate purchasing agent or a clown. It's because you've been corrupted by evil. If you think the Great Psychologists don't understand evil, the so-called Great Religions are utterly worthless in their treatment of it.
What answers this: Moral relativism (FOURTH time today I mention it! Good god!). Evil does not exist in reality, because evil is subjective and thus relative to the person. Likewise, definitions of evil are all subjective. There is not real psychology behind evil itself. And jung isn't so much a psychologist as...a spiritist. This is why science doesn't bother, why psychology has no place in it, and why evolution has no say in it. Our perception is what defines what we think is evil.
Well, I dont think criminals have any resemblence to the Olympian Gods frankly...more like the convulsed visage of the Titans, whom Zeus hurled into Tartarus. The Ancient Greeks took evil seriously throughout their religion and developed an idea of 'Hell' a few hundred years before the Hebrews borrowed it from the Zoroastrian Persians. There were actually three afterworlds in their view. 1. Tartarus, the place of the damned, where those condemned by the Gods would suffer endlessly cruel punishment. 2. Hades, a kind of neutral zone where the shades of men would live on eternally in a dream state, without any distinct conciousness, performing the labours and occupations to which they were accustomed on earth. 3. Elysium, the blessed isles far to the west, where those favoured of the Gods would live out a second golden age of perpetual duration. Anyway, I dont see how what youve said of Jung speaks adequately to the origin of evil in the human psyche. I did however find something on Freud's last book 'Civilization and its Discontents' that sounds somewhat similar...I need to study it more. This is part of a review of the book from the Amazon site: "Freud's Civilization and its Discontents could arguably be one of the most compelling books you will ever encounter, if read properly. The problematic posed by Freud is a fundamental one. Freud argues that the demands of civilization and demands of our instincts are out of sync. He posits that humans are haunted by an assortment of powerful unconscious needs. These hardcore "needs" range from sexual fulfillment to a release of aggression. These primal needs for sexual fulfillment and aggressions were once the tools we used to survive. With the dawning of a new age, we no longer need to use these tools. We turn inwards. See, juxtaposed and interconnected is the other side of the coin, is civilization - a phenomenon that inhibits these primal drives. But we need civilization to give us a different sense of security. It is a catch-22. Throughout the ages, then the constant tug of war between these two forces has caused ruptures in our history was the tension is expressed in frustration. Freud is really informative when he posits that we turn this aggression inward. Perhaps it is how civilization has configured good and evil that is turning this mechanism out of sync. In an almost sado-masochistic move, the superego is now torturing the ego. It is the collision rather than the confluence that is ruining this forced marriage. I am not certain that Nietzsche really had this sort of impact on Freud but I am reminded of Dionysus and Apollo from The Birth of Tragedy. Nietzsche was trying to convey a partnership between them more than a countering or perhaps better, a "healthy tension." To be human is to be stretched between these two domains. The Dionysian is the raw impulses, chaos, and absurdity of existence; the Apollonian is the ordering impulse that seeks order, the eternal (in logic, religion, or morality, etc.) and beauty. As a particular existence, we are comprised of the raw stuff that is life in its very heart. We are contradiction, passions, chaos; but we cannot live in this domain alone, because it is ugly, terrifying and absurd. Thus we are wont to make it beautiful, to create from it a habitable and beautiful world (and self). Without the Dionysian, there can be no Apollonian. Without Apollonian, life would not be bearable. Hopefully, Nietzsche (as does Freud) does not advocate a return to our "bestial natures." However, Nietzsche declares that it is better to be a Cesare Borgia than a Christian, for at least great things are possible with the raw power and nobility of the beast. The Christian, to him, is enfeeblement and brutalizes the nobility and power inherent in humankind. To be capable of greatness, one must be capable of evil and good. The Christian, however, esteems everything that is meek, pitiful and weak. Action is evil, the world is evil, and we must quietly await a better one. Nietzsche, and the existentialists, would resist any attempt to ascribe a "nature" which predetermines us. We are flux. We are change. We are in a constant state of becoming and there is no prior nature that determines what we will become. Although Freud was a champion for the recognition of these primal urges, it cannot be said that he advocated a free for all. What is really powerful in Freud is that civilization is not seen to be purely an external thing and it has real consequences on the inside. Our superego - civilizations handmaiden on the inside - is now calling the shots. As we internalize what the external is telling us to do, how to act - like gnawing guilt it invades our psyche to the extent that no matter how we wish to transgress, we become and need the very thing that causes our frustration. If you peg the most basic response to fight or flight, then civilization can be seen to have removed that which was causing all sorts of anxiety - as we no longer express and remove sexual needs and aggression "in the wild." Freud it could be argued is saying that the superego now attacks the ego denying out most elemental needs. Those needs though, because of the reconfiguration of civilization are suppressed. The two forces - the superego and the ego, instead of working together are working against each other. If perhaps there is a hope for a sense of a new humanism, that this might be the answer - finding a way for the superego to work with rather than against the ego, that is of course if you have bought in on the duality. The debate rages on."
Incredible post. As someone who considers himself capable of being very evil and very good, what you have said makes complete sense....
