Psychology and Spirituality
Pastoral Ministries Program, Santa Clara University
(last taught Winter 2002)

Lecture 8: Evil

1. Housekeeping: Papers returned;
2. Prayer
3. Newspaper: San Jose Mercury, March 28, 1998, pp. 1B and 4B

Mother's arrest sparks sanity debate

Was she insane or evil?

This week Bay Area residents are searching for answers after 25-year-old Megan Hogg was arrested and charged with murdering her three daughters. Hogg could face the death penalty if convicted...

"This is the most evil act I have ever seen," said Daly City police Lt. Steve Lowe, "There can be no reason for killing your kids."

Such crimes have a high shock value, experts say, because of the sacred bond society assumes between mother and child.

For police and prosecutors, breaking this bond is one of the most heinous crimes imaginable...

Megan Hogg's attorney, George Walker, rejects claims of evil and will build a defense based on Hogg's history of depression, seizures and use of strong prescription drugs that could have provoked a psychotic episode the night her three children died.

"I cannot believe that God made her evil from the egg," said Walker, noting that the first time he met Hogg he was struck by how tiny she was. "This was a blip on this otherwise normal, non-criminal life..."

[Mothers who kill older children] frequently attempt to kill themselves, as Hogg did, as well as their children, and some succeed. Experts call this "altruistic filicide," and say these women are usually mentally ill.

"You have a depressed mother who has become somewhat psychotic," explained Redwood City-based forensic expert George Wilkinson. "She believes that the world is so awful and unbearable a place for her that it would be unconscionable to allow her children to suffer (in it alone)."

"There is a delusional quality, but it has a rational aspect," Wilkinson said, "once you get into the delusion."

Experts say these suicidal mothers love their children and feel the children cannot exist without them.

"These mothers tend to be well aware of their children as children, that's part of their pain," Wilkinson said. "They're trying to save the children they love."

Wilkinson said he has examined several mothers who fit this category after they killed their children.

"They were emotionally impoverished people," he added.

4. The Language of Evil: rooted in human experiences.
   Example: A man addressing an evangelical who was insistently asking "Do you believe in the Devil? said: "I don't need to believe; I've seen him." Sharing in twos:
   1. Where have you seen/experienced what you would describe as "evil"?
      1. What was it like? What were its qualities?
      2. How did you feel?
      3. How do you understand the experience now?

5. The language of evil
   1. How do we use the language of evil? What purposes are served?
      1. social control
      2. self-defense- distancing from the uncanny, unusual or frightening
      3. ego protection
   2. How do we see the language of "evil" being used tdoay?
      1. discourse following September 11
      2. President Bush's "Axis of Evil"
      3. See Taliban cartoon
      4. Satire: "The Axis of Just as Evil" (satirewire.com)
   3. Definitions (Diamond, 1996):
      1. Sanford and Comstock-- sociological study Sanctions for Evil: "In using the word evil we mean not that an act or pattern of life is necessarily a sin or a crime according to some law, but rather that it leads to damage or pain suffered by people, to social destructiveness of a degree so serious as to call for use of an ancient, heavily freighted term." (56)
      2. "evil can be considered that tendency which- whether in oneself or others- would inhibit personal growth and expansion, destroy or limit innate potentialities, curtail freedom, fragment or distintigrate the personality, and diminish the quality of personal relationships. (56, italics in original)
      3. Existential evil-- natural disasters; accidents
      4. Human evil: "those attitudes and behaviors that promote excessive interpersonal aggression, cruelty, hostility, disregard for the integrity of others, self-destructiveness, psychopathology, and human misery in general." (57: italics in original)
      5. Can be single person (individual evil) or a group, country or culture (collective evil)
6. "Midzone" Experiences: the exluded middle ground of Western consciousness. [see chart ]
   1. Our language about evil is embedded in scripture and western civilization. We need to remember that the language is rooted in reality, in experience
   2. Sometimes language of demons and evil is a matter of "non-scientific language"
      1. Mark 9:17-27 (epilepsy)
   3. Walter Wink's series on "the powers" (Wink 1984, 1986, 1992, 1998): Language describes the reality of non-material being; inner reality
7. The development of the idea of Satan (see Escher picture: The Scapegoat)
   1. Satan in Hebrew scripture:
      1. original unity of Yahweh: "Satan" in I Chronicles 21:1, but "the anger of the LORD" in parallel of II Samuel 24:1
      2. Zechariah 3:1-2 : Satan as the prosecuting attorney
      3. Job 1-3: the "left hand of God" God and Satan in cahoots
   2. Intertestamental period:
      1. Development of language of Satan and demons (Qumran-- Dead Sea Scrolls)
      2. Apocalyptic thinking (split of good and evil)
      3. Elaine Pagels The Origin of Satan: Language of "satan" and demonic used to label the "intimate enemy" this person who once was my friend now is a heretic; "the Devil did it" (Pagels, 1995).
   3. Jesus and Paul (Sanford, 1987, chapter 6: "Jesus, Paul and the Shadow.")
      1. From monistic Hebrew tradition to dualistic
      2. Jesus keeps good and evil together; recognizing potential in each person:
         1. Mark 10:18: "Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone."
         2. Mark 7:18-23: "He said to them, "Then do you also fail to understand? Do you not see that whatever goes into a person from outside cannot defile, since it enters, not the heart but the stomach, and goes out into the sewer?" (Thus he declared all foods clean.) And he said, "It is what comes out of a person that defiles. For it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come: fornication, theft, murder, adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person."
      3. Paul begins to move toward split; Romans 7
      4. Anti-Christ-- full dualism; split of good and evil; played out in Revelation
   4. Possession and exorcism:
      1. Interconnection of spiritual and mental crises: example of e-mail writer.
      2. Interest in exorcisms: articles in Time and San Jose Mercury News
8. Schwarz: psychological approaches (Schwarz, 1995)
   1. Konrad Lorenz and other sociobiologists suggest a root in aggression; what was survival factor in the wild is now over-developed into murderous behavior by increased intelligence and technology and the "deadly sins of civilized humanity."
      1. Overpopulation, leading to increased contact and conflict
      2. Destruction of natural habitat
      3. Rat race of humanity against itself
      4. Disappearance of strong emotion and passion through pampering
      5. Genetic deterioration through lessened pressure for selection
      6. Breakdown of tradition
      7. Increasing susceptibility to indoctrination
   2. Freud:
      1. Inborn drive to destruction thanatos-- the death instinct which moves opposite to eros-- life instinct
      2. must direct thanatos outwardly as aggression
      3. mediation through ego; ethical code in superego-- internalization of external authority
   3. Erich Fromm: Tragedy of evil
      1. humanistic psychologist. evil is specifically human: alienation comes from expressing choice, removal from instinct, always falling short
      2. "decay syndrome"-- love of death, narcissism, fixation on incest (similar to thanatos)
      3. struggle of love for life and love for death
      4. denial of original sin-- humanity not inherently depraved, but with inclinations to sin and to good (yetzer) Disobedience in Eden is an acto of liberation and maturity (Fromm, 1966)
      5. evil: not sure there is such a thing as "evil", Rather, human being's loss of self "through the tragic attempt to rid himself of the burden of his humanity" (Fromm, 1964, 148)
   4. Eugen Drewermann: Alienation from God
      1. separation from God leads to efforts to achieve what can only be achieved in communion; thus, increasing alienation
      2. uncertainty, anxiety, defensiveness, rebellion, finite self-empowerment ; separation from God engenders separation from self and others
      3. attempts to divinize humanity
      4. sin contains its own punishment; every effort to achieve transforms that achieved into its opposite
      5. existence in the face of death
      6. evil as uniquely human state of being
      7. Genesis 3 as developmental story: Eden story is a recapitulation of early life (pre-and post-natal)
9. Sanford- three perspectives on evil (Sanford, 1987)
   1. "Ego-centered" -- relative to the individual: evil is what I don't like
   2. Human feeling: Limited perspective-- what only seems evil until one sees the multiple possibilities in broader perspective (this is often what happens in therapy as one moves from more ego-centered to broader understanding)
   3. Divine perspective: valuing (feeling function)
   4. Illustration: the young Nazi who moves from egocentrism to human feeling and finally cannot bear the divine perspective
10. Sanford's approach to evil; based in Jungian concepts: (see chart)
    1. Archetypes: unconscious patterns of experience, universal
    2. Individuation: the process of becoming an individual; each person's path is different
    3. Ego: ordering principle of the conscious mind
    4. Persona: the "mask" we turn toward the world
    5. Shadow: the accumulation of all the devalued, rejected, repressed parts of the personality; both personal and collective
       1. How do we not deal with Shadow?
          1. denial
          2. projection-- attributing to another the qualities that we have not recognized in ourselves (Matthew 7)
          3. warfare. (But "we become what we hate" (Wink); the more we struggle against Shadow, the more it gains power) Shel Silverstein: "If we had hinges on our heads/ There wouldn't be no sin/ `Cause we could take the bad stuff out/ And leave the good stuff in."
    6. Our challenge is to know our Shadow, relate to it, reclaim it, assimilate it. This does not mean to act it out without restraint; we need to relate to it, not identify with it.
    7. We have access to the Shadow through recognizing projections; dreams, fantasies
    8. Christian duality tends to keep the Shadow hidden and split off
11. M. Scott Peck (1983)
    1. Essence of evil is deception: "People of the lie" self-deceiving and deceiving others
       1. "The central defect of evil is not the sin but the refusal to acknowledge it." (69) "...those who have `crossed over the line' are characterized by their absolute refusal to tolerate the sense of their own sinfulness." (71)
       2. Scapegoating-- projection of evil
       3. Need to preserve appearance-- not to be good, but to look good
       4. "We become evil by attempting to hide from ourselves." (76)
    2. Narcissism is at the root of human evil
       1. "Unsubmitted will" Not strength of will in itself, but unwillingness to submit
       2. What causes this? Unknown.
       3. Becoming evil through bad choices over time
    3. Can Evil be considered like a mental illness?
       1. Illness implies suffering-- evil people don't necessarily suffer
          1. many asymptomatic illnesses in early stages, or people don't accept that they are ill
          2. "illness and disease should be defined as any defect in the structure of our bodies or our personalities that prevents us from fulfilling our potential as human beings" (125)
       2. Someone with illness is a victim
          1. result of choices; lifestyle
       3. Evil is untreatable
          1. many such uncurable disorders
       4. Designation as disease requires compassion
    4. Suggested diagnosis for Personality disorder: evil (129) Similar to descriptions in the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual- the guidebook to mental disorders)
       1. Consistent destructive, scapegoating behavior, which may often be quite subtle.
       2. Excessive, albeit usually covert, intolerance to criticism and other forms of narcissistic injury.
       3. Pronounced concern with a public image and self-image of respectability, contributing to a stability of life-style but also to pretentiousness and denial of hateful feelings or vengeful motives.
       4. Intellectual deviousness, with an increased likelihood of a mild schizophreniclike disturbance of thinking at times of stress.
    5. Problems with "diagnosing" evil:
       1. Resistance to making any moral judgement
       2. Making moral judgements "scientific" oversteps bounds of science; plays into our existing overdependence on authority
       3. Danger that diagnosis might become another means for projection; limiting our own sense of connection and acknowledgement of our own evil; by identifying others as "evil," we excuse our own tendency toward evil.
12. Alter (1994):
1. Insight from Ernst Becker: attempt to overcome our anxiety in the face of death; longing for control, safety, continuation
   1. Examples: Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot
2. "Psychological evil is not so much the outcome of behavior (whether or not someone is hurt) as it is the controlling behavior itself." (144f.)
13. Additional: see Journal of Pastoral Counseling 25:1 (1990)
14. Assignment for next time: Ruland: Sacred Lies and Silences, Reading from Paul Pruyser: "The seamy side of current religious beliefs (1991c)